I’ve just finished reading this article: The Dark Side
It’s really interesting. I was aware of the problems of light pollution (who isn’t?) but it made me think back on a night a couple of years ago. I was sailing in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with the Tall Ships Youth Trust, and we were spending a typical night watch on the bridge. It was a wonderfully clear night, and those of us who weren’t steering or on lookout were looking up at the sky.
As our eyes adjusted to the darkness we could start to make out more and more details. Eventually, someone wondered at what the band of lighter sky above us was. Of course, it was the Milky Way. What was interesting was that of the seventeen of us there at the time, only one person knew what it was. The reason for that was that only he had ever seen it before.
I don’t view myself as a particularly inexperienced outdoors person. Certainly I’m not an experienced mountain climber, nor an accomplished transatlantic sailor, but in comparison to the vast majority of UK citizens I’ve been out and about quite a bit – camped in some lovely places, spent a lot of time gazing at the stars and enjoying the general tranquillity. Now, given this situation, it seems strange that I never queried why I’d never seen the Milky Way – it just never occurred to me that I’d been missing out.
The simple fact of the matter is that even in the English countryside, you don’t generally get to see much of the night sky. Obviously, usually it’s the ghastly weather, but even on a clear night the nearby villages and towns cast enough loom over the horizon to obscure much of the detail.
In any case, the article’s made me think a lot more about this often-overlooked aspect of our natural world. Certainly, there are trees and animals and other pretty things that are easy to see during the day, but from now on I’ll make more effort to pay attention to things and views above my head – not just because they’re so hard to see, but also because they’re impressively beautiful.
