Unabashed

Photo from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website. Click for full size.

I have seen it, yes, but I wasn’t looking for it, so the moment doesn’t really stand out for me. I can remember nights when I was at sea (aboard the USS America) when the moon was so bright you could barely look at it. I distinctly remember the wonder I had when I first saw that spectacle. But the Milky Way was never something that I intentionally looked for, and being a faint cloud of murk, wasn’t something I noticed right away. But that’s all about to change, because I want to see it. Unfortunately, like most people who live in the eastern USA, the light pollution situation is far too bad to be able to make out much at all, and that vague murk is not visible in my skies. You folks out west have a distinct advantage in that regard. But good news! There are places nearby where the light pollution is much less intense, and thanks to this website, I was able to create an overlay for Google Earth to produce the following map, which I edited with Photoshop with a nice red dot on Catherine, Alabama, a tiny community in Alabama’s Black Belt where light pollution is about as low as it gets. At least in these parts. Soon I will behold the wonder and glory of the…well, the little tiny portion of the Universe in which our Sun is one of about a gazillion other suns. But it’s pretty cool, still.

To see the Milky Way, you need a remote area with very little light pollution on a moonless night. Late summer, I hear, is a good time of year. Between dusk and midnight is primetime.

And if you look closely, you’ll see a little yellow push pin marked “home.” And that pushpin is stuck in my forehead right now.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: galaxy, how do I see, how to see the milky way, milky way, spectacle