« e-mail | Main | Difficult day »
September 16, 2007
August 30, 2008
We're running out of stars, according to David Owen of the New Yorker:
In 1610, Galileo Galilei published a small book describing astronomical observations that he had made of the skies above Padua. His homemade telescopes had less magnifying and resolving power than most beginners’ telescopes sold today, yet with them he made astonishing discoveries: that the moon has mountains and other topographical features; that Jupiter is orbited by satellites, which he called planets; and that the Milky Way is made up of individual stars. ... Today, by contrast, most Americans are unable to see the Milky Way in the sky above the place where they live, and those who can see it are sometimes baffled by its name.
The stars have not become dimmer; rather, the Earth has become vastly brighter, so that celestial objects are harder to see.
"The nighttime sky," he goes on to write, "throughout human history has been a powerful source of reflection, inspiration, discovery, and plain old jaw-dropping wonder." So I've started building a map of the darkest skies in the Northwest, with nearby camp sites, using data from the Dark Sky Finder.
I'm mapping areas where, on a moonless night, the Milky Way should be visible. Under the darkest skies, clouds appear black rather than illuminated during a new moon, more than 14,000 stars fill the sky and the Milky Way is awash with color and light. I haven't found any skies so dark, but I've come close.
Cloudless weekend new moons are hard to come by in western Oregon, when rain blots out the sky for half the year. Last night, the moon was small and the sky was clear. With Ben, I made the long dark drive to the edge of the Tygh Valley.
Even as just a sliver, the moon's light nearly obscured the Milky Way. I could just make out our galaxy's hazy outline. A three-dimensional field of stars glimmered above our heads as we breathed air heavy with pine sap, and from time to time meteors appeared and vanished in a streaking blink.
The sky will be darker still on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2008, Labor Day weekend. I'm thinking of reserving two campsites, enough room for a dozen people or so. I'll build up a big fire, put marshmallows on sticks and eat s'mores and grilled veggie burgers until long after dark. Someone else can sing the camp songs, I don't have the voice for it. Then, when the flames die down, those of us whose jaws have been too tightly hinged for too long can lie back and wait for them to drop as we take in the night sky of our ancestors.
Would anybody care to join me?
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at September 16, 2007 04:39 PM
Comments
I would love to join you!
Posted by: Mom at September 16, 2007 08:49 PM
Me too. I was just camping out near Mt. Jefferson. The sky was so excellent.
Posted by: Rian at September 17, 2007 02:02 AM