2008 Woodie Awards
This Week in the Sky: Nov. 19-25
Ben Brown-Steiner
Issue date: 11/19/07 Section: Features
- Page 1 of 1
Many of us are heading back to our families for Thanksgiving Break to enjoy good food and hopefully have fun with our families. However, many of us will be heading back to urban or suburban areas, where the lights that make city life possible drown out the skies above. For my first two years here at Clarkson, it was always upon returning to Clarkson that I thought "Wow! It's so dark here!" But now, after four years here, it is when I return to Rochester that I think "Wow! It's so bright here!"
Most of the people in the US live in or near cities, and it is getting harder to find a place to work and live that provides dark, clear night time skies. Many graduates will head to cities, and most will leave behind the rare nights that we have here at Clarkson.
The Northeast Blackout of 2003 left people in places such as New York City in an unprecedented dark night. Many of them saw, for the first time in their lives, the stars in the sky. Now I can understand why, back before Copernicus and Kepler, people were afraid of the dark. Light pollution was minimal back then, and the night was this enormous, unfathomable disruption of the daytime. They didn't really know what they were looking at, and many made up reassuring stories and stayed in their homes.
But today, we have access to tools that give us a better view of the sky than Galileo had when he discovered the moons of Jupiter or the mountains on the moon. With binoculars and telescopes, we can look at, with our eyes or photograph with expensive cameras, a breathtaking variety of objects: planets, moons, nebulae, galaxies, stars, clusters, asteroids and comets, to name a few.
Here in Potsdam, we have access to the one of the darkest skies in the northeast. With Mars in the sky during the early night, and Venus dominating it in the wee hours of the morning, there is no better time or opportunity to take a few minutes to look at them. I was driving on Rt. 11 before sunrise last Saturday (I had to take a test in Watertown), and could see Orion through my window, brighter than I could ever see it back home. It was something really special.
So have a good Thanksgiving, and go out side at least one night and realize how much you're not seeing.
Most of the people in the US live in or near cities, and it is getting harder to find a place to work and live that provides dark, clear night time skies. Many graduates will head to cities, and most will leave behind the rare nights that we have here at Clarkson.
The Northeast Blackout of 2003 left people in places such as New York City in an unprecedented dark night. Many of them saw, for the first time in their lives, the stars in the sky. Now I can understand why, back before Copernicus and Kepler, people were afraid of the dark. Light pollution was minimal back then, and the night was this enormous, unfathomable disruption of the daytime. They didn't really know what they were looking at, and many made up reassuring stories and stayed in their homes.
But today, we have access to tools that give us a better view of the sky than Galileo had when he discovered the moons of Jupiter or the mountains on the moon. With binoculars and telescopes, we can look at, with our eyes or photograph with expensive cameras, a breathtaking variety of objects: planets, moons, nebulae, galaxies, stars, clusters, asteroids and comets, to name a few.
Here in Potsdam, we have access to the one of the darkest skies in the northeast. With Mars in the sky during the early night, and Venus dominating it in the wee hours of the morning, there is no better time or opportunity to take a few minutes to look at them. I was driving on Rt. 11 before sunrise last Saturday (I had to take a test in Watertown), and could see Orion through my window, brighter than I could ever see it back home. It was something really special.
So have a good Thanksgiving, and go out side at least one night and realize how much you're not seeing.
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