October 3, 2007

Participate in the Great World Wide Star Count!

Great World Wide Star Count

They have activity guides written in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, and Chinese. (Hey, someone forgot Poland!)

Anyway, this is an organized international activity to get people to go out and look at the sky, stars in constellations in particular, and report what stars they can see and what stars they can't see. The idea is to get an idea about light pollution and how it affects the ability of people in various locations to see the stars.

This is sort of a tragic issue to me, and I encourage everyone reading this to participate and appreciate what it means. It used to be that everyone had a shared culture and knowledge involving familiarity with the stars. Today, with such a large fraction of the population living in light polluted cities, many people have never really seen the sky for what it is.

This is one of the reasons I live in Wyoming. The dark skies hold magic, and from my front driveway I can see the stars better than any of you living in cities of even moderate size. I once had a summer student from Newark who, at 19, had never seen the Milky Way until the summer she came to work with me. She was blown away. And I can see the Milky Way any time it's up, easily, assuming it isn't cloudy.

Anyway, please reflect on this fundamental chance in the culture of humanity, a subtle effect of urbanization and technological progress, that is forever changing our civilization.

In particular, those of you living in Europe, Japan, and in the US east of the Mississippi are hopelessly doomed.

Posted by Mike at October 3, 2007 11:49 PM | TrackBack