Light pollution

[alokmohan]

In early October, thousands of people around the globe stepped outside to gaze at their local night sky. As part of an event called the Great World Wide Star Count, adults and kids looked for one of two constellations—Cygnus in the Northern Hemisphere and Sagittarius in the Southern Hemisphere. The observers recorded how many stars they saw and how bright the stars were, and then posted their results online. <br />The Star Count was part of a global effort to help scientists learn more about how light pollution affects our view of the night sky. Whether participants saw thousands of stars—or just a dozen—depended a lot on whether they were surrounded by darkness or by twinkling city lights. <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br />Dark spots on the map, above, show the locations of people who participated in the first annual Great Worldwide Star Count. Over 2 weeks, people in 64 countries made 6,624 observations.<br /> <br />UCAR<br /> <br /><br /><br />On a clear night, with no clouds, moonlight, or artificial lights to block the view, people can see more than 14,000 stars in the sky, says Dennis Ward, an astronomer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colo. He http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20071205/Feature1.asphelped coordinate the Star Count. But when people are surrounded by city lights, he says, they're lucky to see 150 stars. <br /><br />If you've ever driven toward a big city at night and seen its glow from afar, you've witnessed light pollution. It occurs when light from streetlights, office buildings, signs, and other sources streams into space and illuminates the night sky. This haze of light makes many stars invisible to people on Earth. <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br />Even at night, big cities like New York (shown above) glow from light pollution, making stargazing difficult.<br /> <br />Charliebrown7034/Wikipedia<br /> <br /><br /><</safety_wrapper>

 

[usn_skwerl]

alokmohan, i don't intend to sound rude at all, but I'm just asking; when you copy paste something, it seems many of your posts are cut off somewhere in mid-sentence. is it unintentional, or so that we go to the link to see the rest for ourselves? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>