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Can You See Many Stars Where You Live?

Jimmu

Administrator
Staff member
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One of the disadvantages of city life is missing out on the beauty of the night sky due to light pollution. Are you lucky enough to get a good view of the night sky from where you live or can you barely see any? Bonus points if anyone has some pretty pics of the stars!

I live around an hour out of the city center but can only see a moderate number of stars from here. I’d love to take a trip somewhere more remote to spend some time stargazing.
 
I can see some stars, sure. Love staring at the night sky, it's weirdly dizzying like it's gonna swallow me up. Even though there is some light pollution where I am in the suburbs, the longer I stare at it, the more stars pop out at me. Another thing with medium visibility is that it's probably ironically easier to spot constellations because they usually consist of the lower magnitude stars with higher visibility. When they're cluttered up with high magnitude stars in a full night sky, they're harder to find. I can pretty consistently find Orion, the Big Dipper, and Cassiopeia in the night sky (depending on time of night/season of course).

I wanna go out into the countryside or something someday and just look at the full sky though. I got a little bit of a taste of that from my uncle's vacation home back in Georgia, but it still had some light pollution. What'd really be cool is to see the Milky Way.

Only pic I have that's worth sharing is this bad phone pic I took of the Winter Triangle through the sidelight. I noticed this in the sky the past two years in a row when looking out at the sky, and it was so perfect, that I needed to look it up because it surely had to be documented. It is. It's an asterism containing stars from three constellations and is a near perfect equilateral triangle in the night sky.

e7b8e98179.jpg

If you like stargazing and use an iPhone, I really enjoy this app called Planets. Lots of fun stuff in there; it uses the phone's accelerometer to let you point your phone at the sky and it'll line up the star map to tell you what you're looking at.
 

Morbid Minish

Spooky Scary Skeleton.
Forum Volunteer
I can see a good amount where I live. I'm far from any big city, and far from any small city as well. Lol. I live in the middle of nowhere. There's still some light pollution from street lamps in people's yards and stuff, but it's minimal so it doesn't interfere too much. Some nights you can see them better than others. But I never get tired of staring up at them whenever I'm out at night, and it awes me every time. It's an interesting feeling just staring straight up into the darkness and getting a bit dizzy because it feels like the darkness and all the little lights are encompassing you.

Love staring at the night sky, it's weirdly dizzying like it's gonna swallow me up.

I posted my post before I saw yours, so it's funny we both described it the same way!
 

Mellow Ezlo

Spoony Bard
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eh?
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I live in the city and can usually see about 20 or so in the sky. One day I'd love to drive out to the countryside far from the city and gaze at a sky full of stars. I remember being mesmerized looking out the sun roof during a late night drive and seeing thousands of bright stars in the sky once.
 

ExLight

why
Forum Volunteer
And sometimes one of those is actually an airplane.
CAN WE PRETEND THAT AIRPLANES IN THE NIGHT SKY AR-

Sometimes able to see a single one or two. Not sure if any of them are planets or stars either, cuz planets are usually a bit chonkier so they might be easier to see sometimes?

I live in the largest city in South America, so pollution is rampant, so that makes seeing the stars fairly hard. Even at the quiet hours the whole city is pretty much still artificially light up.

Whenever we go visit relatives in the countryside it's always a rare opportunity to see the stars a bit, which is very nice.
 

Hyrulian Hero

Zelda Informer Codger
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Oct 6, 2016
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SoDak
Saw the northern lights from my back porch two months ago. We can see plenty of stars. God willing, we'll be moving further out this year where we can see even more.

Picsart_22-08-31_09-17-55-695.jpgGold up in this house.

Picsart_22-08-31_09-19-57-481.jpgView of a dead duck ufo from the front door. Lots of room for stars.
 

TheGreatCthulhu

Composer of the Night.
Joined
Jan 22, 2016
Location
United States of America
Gender
Very much a dude.
The place I live is only populated by 50,000 people or so. As a result, there's not much light pollution to begin with, so we see quite a fair number of stars right in the city.

However, it doesn't take long to drive to find a place that's near devoid of people, with beautiful mountains and rivers, and it gets dark. Then the Milky Way shows up, and it's always a wondrous sight.

Idaho I feel is underrated in its natural vistas.

This is Why You Need to Visit the Dark Sky Reserve in Idaho - Redfish Lake  Lodge
 

Hylian Viking

A modern day Hyrule warrior mean mean stride.
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Location
North Carolina
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Male
I used to see constellations back when I lived in Iowa, I was lucky to live in a neighborhood that did not have any streetlights, although now that I live in North Carolina I can barely even make out Polaris. The only thing that does show up is The Moon, It's probably because I live in a subdivision with streetlights, so the only time I really see the stars anymore in North Carolina is when I am up in the Appalachian Mountains doing an occasional weekend getaway.
 

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