How many billion stars do you see from your house?

"It is not too late to save our skies, your active participation and campaigning with the International Dark-Sky Association can help insure that the nights are restored ..."
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey

How many stars do you see when you step outside at night? Is your sky a blaze of starlight as in the picture at right, or dulled by human-made electric light like the picture at left?

Until about a century ago, all human societies on all continents had evolved with the Milky Way above, and the constellations clear above their heads. Stars shone brightly. Now most of us have come to believe that the "sky" is that hazy dark stuff above us. Wrong! That's like believing that cows and hotdogs are the same creature. We are allowing our heritage to disappear before our eyes, but it's not too late to change things. Here is an organisation campaigning to bring back wonder to our lives – something our children might never know – something we might even have little knowledge of ourselves.

A correspondent of mine wrote that, at age 40-something, she had never seen the Milky Way. To my mind, she might as well have said she had never made love.

I believe that reclamation of the stars is a cause well worthy of support and action and I commend it to all Almaniacs:

International Dark-Sky Association

Categories: astronomy, environment, mythology, activism, action, pollution, light-pollution