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Light Pollution

This morning I got up for my run while it was still dark. After the first quarter of a mile or so, I looked up at the sky. I saw a few very bright stars up there. While this normally makes me feel humbled and connected at the same time, today it just made me feel disappointed.

My disappointment was entirely relative to what I saw this past weekend when I looked up. Being in the country pretty far from any significant light pollution, I could see so many more stars than I normally do in the city. I am talking tens of thousands of times more. It was amazing and beautiful. It was a display of stars that I had not experienced in a long, long time.

It made me think of the star gazers of the past such as Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei. I thought of how they looked up at very much the same night sky, and probably an even more stunning display than the one I was seeing. I thought of other people at different places in the world who were also sharing the spectacular sight of that night sky.

It was a new moon this past weekend which meant that, without the reflected light of our closest star, there was even more to be seen than there otherwise would have been. I saw the Delta Aquarid meteor shower thanks to the extra darkness. I am pretty sure I saw the ISS fly over, although I cannot find a way to lookup past flyovers on NASA's website to confirm this.

In conclusion, more trips to the country for star gazing are definitely warranted in the near future.

(Image credit: http://neblandvm.outdoornebraska.gov/)
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