Given the harmful effects of light pollution, a pair of astronomers has coined a new term to help focus efforts to combat it. Their term, as reported in a brief paper in the preprint database arXiv and a letter to the journal Science, is “noctalgia.” In general, it means “sky grief,” and it captures the collective pain we are experiencing as we continue to lose access to the night sky.
There was a NASA lady on StarTalk recently talking about how there’s something like 360,000 more satellites planned/approved to go into orbit and it’s going to completely erase the night sky. We’re at something like 7700 currently.
We are slowly turning ourselves into Krikkit.
Soon as we invented the little green piece of paper it was all downhill from there
Should never have gotten down from the trees
But digital watches are pretty cool, aren’t they?
Ehh apparently it’s 11330 as of the end of June this year.
If you have seen that StarTalk episode, do you remember what Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s response to that? He seems like good people…
I don’t recall offhand his response but I believe it was this episode: https://startalkmedia.com/show/the-story-of-space-imaging-with-carolyn-madam-saturn-porco/
What was it?
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Reminds me of how we sometimes export light pollution. When I first got to Afghanistan I thought I would be able to see the stars being in the middle of a desert. That idea was quickly made harder to accomplish by the massive light pollution coming from camp leatherneck which, along with the moon dust perpetually floating mid air, killed any chance to see the stars clearly for miles around. Base turned a patch of desert into a sprawling light factory in just a few years.
I live in the darkest part of my town. When my porch light burned out, I decided to not replace it because sometimes I can see stars at night.
Why is every other website being bought by future inc and using that same layout
Lived in the city for a few years before moving back to my rural hometown. The night sky without any light pollution was definitely an underrated thing I didn’t realize I missed.
In my parents farm the night sky is perfectly visible. They live far from any town and there are no lights you can’t just turn off so sometimes I just look at the sky when I’m visiting.
Plenty of places like this still in my country thankfully.
I’ve always lived in cities and didn’t see the milky way until I was in my 30s.
Anyhow, I took my kid camping last weekend and she couldn’t believe how many stars there were. We were both enjoying it but then the string of SpaceX satellites went by and kind of ruined the moment
I laughed at that last part. I am sorry that happened to you but it is pretty funny.
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We were just up in the mountains last weekend, it was by far the best stargazing I have ever experienced in my 40 years. I could see the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye.
Anyway, I counted over 15 satellites during the 2 hours we were outside, as well as 2 very bright meteors. Plus we saw the international space station and an iridium flare.
Elon ruins everything he touches
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What a simple, great word to describe it.
Try in a small town. Seriously, tho villages are better. Go in the backroads, you’ll have plenty of sky and stars to get lost in.
Only in the most remote deserts, wilderness areas and oceans can you find a sky as dark as our ancestors knew them.
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I think it’s quite nihilistic to just accept that there’s no going back to a better night sky as if too many lights being kept on a night is an insurmountable problem.
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There are few places left on Earth to see an unpolluted night sky. Definitely nowhere near civilization. On top of that, light pollution still drowns out dimmer objects permanently. We are blinding ourselves globally. To our ancestors the sky was a living light show. Its no mystery why they thought gods lived there.
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The part that wasn’t in the title:
astronomers have invented a new term to describe the pain associated with this loss: “noctalgia,” meaning “sky grief.”
Only in the most remote deserts, wilderness areas and oceans can you find a sky as dark as our ancestors knew them.
It varies depending on what country your in, but I don’t think people realize how little of a percentage densly populated areas make up of the world. If you’re in the US unless you’re in a place like NY City a 20-45 min drive can get you to a place zero light minus occasional blinks from cell towers/planes/sattalites - and there will also probably be public land there you can go on for free.
And hey, look, the fact stuff like sattalites are interfering with observing the sky isn’t great, but if that sattalite is used for powering agricultural equipment and gathering agricultural data that keeps a billion people from starving to death I’d say that’s a worthy trade off.
Like a life saving drug with side effects, there’s always trade offs as technology and society advance. And mitigating side effects when possible are great, but I thinks it’s important we don’t act like the side effects are occurring in a vacuum, and I would rather live now than in the past without the tech we have now.
if that sattalite is used for powering agricultural equipment and gathering agricultural data that keeps a billion people from starving to death I’d say that’s a worthy trade off.
Those are not the satellites that are the problem. It’s Starlink and other LEO satellites.
