A better quality of darkness

mms

sometimes
always struck me that people need to be able to see the stars a more, especially in london, it grounds people.
This especially struck me when me and couple of blokes i used to share a flat went down to the park one night to check out a passing comet that was in the sky for one night only. one of them who is a proper londoner said he hadn't actually seen or looked up properly at the stars before.I thought this was terribly sad.
One of the problems is light pollution blocking out the night sky, badly designed/directed lighting blocks our vision of the night sky, they seem to have it sorted in some places like Spain but here a view at night over a town is a faint mist of orange light with very little to see above it
.
I make a proper effort when people come down to stay at my mums house in cornwall to take em on a midnight walk to this place called st clements which is a mile down a dark road to the right of my mum's estate.
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=8142 (there was a megalith to the left of the estate in a field but that has been built over with new houses now).

it takes up to an hour to adjust to the lack of light by which time your senses have changed, your eyes adjust to a more subtle play of colours and your ears become tuned into the sounds around you. you become slightly more animal like, i always feel as if i am anthropromorphisising into a fox or something, also you naturally start to see shapes in the trees and shadows etc if you let go of your concentration, its lush, got to be the origins of shadowplay that.

By the time you get to the bottom you reach the gently flowing river, it reflects what light there is, and you can hear the birds in the trees, with the night sky hanging over and its a idyllic dark treat.
a better quality of darkness. http://www.darksky.org/
 

hint

party record with a siren
I live right out in the sticks, so I see it from the other side, I suppose.

whenever I stay with friends in a city it always spins me out - the fact that it's never really dark, the constant rumble and hum, everything still seeming so lively after 9pm.

out here, I regularly walk around with nothing but moonlight to guide me and the stars are as sharp as can be on clear nights. you're right - seeing the world by moonlight is always interesting... the grass becomes silvery, the air seems to be somehow cleaner.

I'm going to japan for 5 days in a couple of weeks and I'm expecting it to comprehensively fuck with my head. even the londoners who I've spoken to who've been tell me that they had difficulty sleeping out there. :confused:
 

sufi

lala
astronomy 2k5

you can tell due west from any point in london, day or night, by observing the flightpaths of the planes heading for LHR
 

hint

party record with a siren
heh

it's gritty! it's urban!

"and if we follow this trail of rubbish left by local wildlife, we'll come to a kebab shop"
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Great post mms. One weird thing about stars is that, if you go to somewhere really dark outside (I experienced this in Finland) and give your eyes time to adjust, you can see stars every where- layers and layers of them, of varying luminosity. It's got a fractal-like depth, the sky. Cosmic.
 

mms

sometimes
Diggedy Derek said:
Great post mms. One weird thing about stars is that, if you go to somewhere really dark outside (I experienced this in Finland) and give your eyes time to adjust, you can see stars every where- layers and layers of them, of varying luminosity. It's got a fractal-like depth, the sky. Cosmic.


yeah its quite something that.
lucky going to finland, i'd love to go. i'd like to go to iceland even more, iceland seems to be a strange country, 80% of the population believe in woodland fairies and imps etc plus there are specially sectioned off areas for the "little people" and if any woodland is going to built on a fairy interpreter has to be bought in to ok it with them.
i think that's quite ace really, bonkers but great. :D
 

sufi

lala
i wuz in iceland this year, for an 'old religion' wedding out in the Þingvellir
thingvellir05.jpg


i only stayed about 36 hours, & as it was May it didn't get dark til about 11, then sun came up about 3... & it never got totally dark....
I was quite steamingly drunkken by that stage anyway so astronavigation was not particularly on my mind...

but i'd HIGHLY recommend visiting reykjavik - it's a great town!
 

version

Well-known member
A mate I was with last summer mentioned this when we were walking home from the pub one night. That one of the things he hated about cities was that he couldn't see the stars.
 

sufi

lala
it's been too cloudy the last couple of nights, it should be around for a few more days though isnt it?
 
Probably nothing / Oh fuck, now what?

Nasa's event will be attended by a representative from Nasa's Planetary Defense Coordination Office – which works to track potentially dangerous objects in space, as well as organise our response to them – as well as representatives of the Neowise space telescope that spotted the comet and gave it its name.

 

sufi

lala
Probably nothing / Oh fuck, now what?

Nasa's event will be attended by a representative from Nasa's Planetary Defense Coordination Office – which works to track potentially dangerous objects in space, as well as organise our response to them – as well as representatives of the Neowise space telescope that spotted the comet and gave it its name.

It was yesterday, disappointingly they didnt reveal that it's an angel sent to deliver us by the supreme being, apparently it's like a big icy chunk
 
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