Thursday, January 15, 2009

Light Pollution

Perhaps this will illuminate your mind (pun intended) as to why Australia, Russia, Alaska, and the Western US are all favorite sites for Astronomical Observation.


Here is NYC, holding the record of worst light pollution in the world, at night. At NIGHT! This is a time-capture photo specifically designed to reveal what is known as sky-glow.

This Adonis of the sky, my darling ORION is shown here at left from dark skies and at right from within the Provo/Orem, UT area. Note the nebula in the sword below his belt, and the yellow shoulder-star is Betelgeuse (beetle-juice) a Red-Giant star.

3 comments:

Heather said...

cool post!

Melissa said...

yikes! That's crazy! I read about that a while back but have never seen the time lapse photo. That really shows it well. orion does look much more impressive in the total dark sky.

Alicia said...

Yeah, even living in Virginia the sky was pitifully saturated with light. I really like the picture of Orion on the left. You never really think about all the other smaller stars that surround Orion. Way cool.