"Tonight, the moon's playing tricks again
I'm feeling seasick again
The whole world could just dissolve
Into a glass of water."
(Okay, enough with the song lyrics. It's storytime.)
Tonight is unseasonably warm. After getting tired of studying 50+ pages on DNA replication (ouch) I decided to go out on the back deck and do some astronomy. I'm still participating in PARI's lunar impact program, but haven't actually sat out and made observations thanks to general madness and Darth Real Life. I figured taking a few pictures of the moon would be a nice study break.
Slight problem. Moonrise isn't until 11:17 tonight. That's okay, I figured. I can set up the scope and camera mount in advance, and maybe do a little stargazing in the meantime. So I got my gear, and I got my chart, and I stepped outside.
Slight problem. There were hardly any stars to be seen.
You see, I now live in the Industrial North. Pollution, both chemical and (in this case) light, is almost constant. To make matters worse, I live on top of a giant hill overlooking an industrial park, a freeway, a field of radio antennas and some general suburban sprawl. There's so much residual brightness in the air that most stars are completely erased. I couldn't even recognize the constellations overhead because so many of their component parts had been obliterated. I counted maybe six visible objects, including Jupiter, from where I stood, and it dawned on me that things weren't exactly working out as planned.
I could have given up, gone back in, and called it a night. Instead I pulled up a deck chair and watched the lights that were giving me trouble in the first place.
Our backyard is heavily wooded, but most of the leaves are gone now and you can clearly see the valley below us through the tree branches. During the day, it's a dull gray maze of industry and suburbia, but at night it looks like a thousand little votive candles. Streetlights are different shades of bronze in different neighborhoods, apparently. You can watch the warning lamps on the antennas blink on and off, out-of-sync with one another, and you can watch the tiny red-yellow-green pattern of stoplights attempt to moderate the endless cycle of traffic. Sometimes a train will go by, and the rumble of the cars is apparent even a few miles away, thanks to the weird acoustics of this hill.
I've got a few lines from The Unforgettable Fire -- "these city lights/they shine as silver and gold" -- that play on a loop in my head whenever I look out here now. Some day I'll have to try to take some pictures of it for you guys, but I'm not sure they can do the scene justice. Disruptive and plan-foiling as it is, at night, it's actually pretty beautiful.
So, no stargazing tonight, or probably any other night I'm at the house. It's okay. There are places around here away from the light pollution -- there's an amateur astronomer's group that meets at the local observatory (apparently there's one not too far away) that I might check out in the near future. For now, I've gotten tired of complaining. Instead, I think I'll just enjoy the view.
...I can't always get what I want. I guess the important thing to remember is that what I have instead isn't so bad after all.
The whole world could just dissolve
Into a glass of water."
(Okay, enough with the song lyrics. It's storytime.)
Tonight is unseasonably warm. After getting tired of studying 50+ pages on DNA replication (ouch) I decided to go out on the back deck and do some astronomy. I'm still participating in PARI's lunar impact program, but haven't actually sat out and made observations thanks to general madness and Darth Real Life. I figured taking a few pictures of the moon would be a nice study break.
Slight problem. Moonrise isn't until 11:17 tonight. That's okay, I figured. I can set up the scope and camera mount in advance, and maybe do a little stargazing in the meantime. So I got my gear, and I got my chart, and I stepped outside.
Slight problem. There were hardly any stars to be seen.
You see, I now live in the Industrial North. Pollution, both chemical and (in this case) light, is almost constant. To make matters worse, I live on top of a giant hill overlooking an industrial park, a freeway, a field of radio antennas and some general suburban sprawl. There's so much residual brightness in the air that most stars are completely erased. I couldn't even recognize the constellations overhead because so many of their component parts had been obliterated. I counted maybe six visible objects, including Jupiter, from where I stood, and it dawned on me that things weren't exactly working out as planned.
I could have given up, gone back in, and called it a night. Instead I pulled up a deck chair and watched the lights that were giving me trouble in the first place.
Our backyard is heavily wooded, but most of the leaves are gone now and you can clearly see the valley below us through the tree branches. During the day, it's a dull gray maze of industry and suburbia, but at night it looks like a thousand little votive candles. Streetlights are different shades of bronze in different neighborhoods, apparently. You can watch the warning lamps on the antennas blink on and off, out-of-sync with one another, and you can watch the tiny red-yellow-green pattern of stoplights attempt to moderate the endless cycle of traffic. Sometimes a train will go by, and the rumble of the cars is apparent even a few miles away, thanks to the weird acoustics of this hill.
I've got a few lines from The Unforgettable Fire -- "these city lights/they shine as silver and gold" -- that play on a loop in my head whenever I look out here now. Some day I'll have to try to take some pictures of it for you guys, but I'm not sure they can do the scene justice. Disruptive and plan-foiling as it is, at night, it's actually pretty beautiful.
So, no stargazing tonight, or probably any other night I'm at the house. It's okay. There are places around here away from the light pollution -- there's an amateur astronomer's group that meets at the local observatory (apparently there's one not too far away) that I might check out in the near future. For now, I've gotten tired of complaining. Instead, I think I'll just enjoy the view.
...I can't always get what I want. I guess the important thing to remember is that what I have instead isn't so bad after all.