Nighthawk Landing

Light pollution sucks. The dark sky is disappearing. Do those warehouse and dealership lights really need to be on 24/7? You can’t even get 20 seconds of stars without a satellite or two, now there’s a commercial space industry, we’ve gotta bring Wifi to the depths of the freaking Marianna Trench or what not so we’ve got 500,000 satellites being launched every day, NASA is in the process of launching a series of 39’ parabolic reflectors for antiquated satellite radio systems… soon STARS will be something that you might actually have to leave the stratosphere to see.

I can’t do anything about the billionaire gallivants about the stratosphere, the incessant need to be connected to everything and everyone from anywhere all of the time, nor can I shut down the power grid on the East Coast and force some darkness BUT what I can do is urge all of you to look up at the stars this month and just notice how much ambient light pollution is actually under our immediate control.

Here in Jarrettsville we are far enough from any major cities to see some fantastic stars – imagine what we could see without all of the ambient unnecessary lights that are on all of the time. Not too far from here you can see the Milky Way with your naked eyes, even here on a clear night that isn’t too humid you can start to catch the form of the galaxy with an unmodified dSLR after about 12 seconds (f2.4, maybe 15 at 3.2 around ISO 3200… but I digress) SO, if you have control over the lights, I beg you – turn them off and look at the stars. There are 4 major meteor showers in the next 45 days, some fantastic planetary alignments in the next few months, there’s another GIANT COMET in the next few years – you want to see it – don’t blow out the sky. Thank you. Stars are supergroovy.