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revans
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 1517
Loc: Fitchburg, MA
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Hi all,
I live in a medium sized New England city with a neighboring twin of the same size. Each has a population of 40K. I've been active in amateur astronomy for about 40 years. When I first started seriously studying the night sky in about 1970, I could see a good part of the Milky Way overhead and in the early morning hours I could see innumerable faint stars that must have been close to magnitude 5.5 or so. I spent some years doing deep sky viewing with a 60 mm refractor and then an 8 inch Newtonian, but gradually the sky became brighter and by the mid 1980s the Milky Way was nearly invisible and the number of visible stars dropped off sharply. I switched over to solar system studies and lunar imaging.
But... then came our current economic recession... and our mayor decided to save on electricity costs by shutting off every other street light in the city... apparently permanently or at least the duration of the recession. I was so wrapped up in lunar work that I didn't notice at first, except for an impression that there seemed to be more stars visible than usual.
Last night there was no moon and I set up my 9.25 inch SCT on its laptop controlled GOTO mount for some general observation. Suddenly I noticed that the Milky way was back and the sky overhead really resembled a star chart again. It was like being transported back to the 70s.
I took a quick tour of M5, M12, M13, M14, M27, and M11. These were not the usual washed out grey low contrast patches I had become used to seeing. Instead they were glorious, detailed and contrasty. M11 was especially incredible looking like spilled sugar on a black cloth with the grains so close together that I couldn't conceive of them being any closer.
It was an amazing night and I hope there will be many more like it...
Rick
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Rick Evans
http://www.freewebs.com/revans_01420/
"The universe is there for us to see, but it cannot be understood without learning its language -- mathematics." Galileo Galilei
Edited by revans (07/20/09 04:41 PM)
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Rob E
Pierrot
Reged: 05/20/09
Posts: 1132
Loc: Eastern Virginia
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Invite your mayor out for a night of stargazing..
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Rob E.
Some of us are actually paid to be funny.
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Zhumell 16"
Orion 120ST
Orion Starmax 127
Baader Planetarium Hyperions
Zhumell SWA EP's
There's two ways to do anything...right and twice
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Prima Luna
super member
Reged: 01/17/09
Posts: 112
Loc: Huntington Beach, California
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Great suggestion!
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Meade ETX-125AT w/UHTC & Tripod
Celestron Regal LX 10X42
7mm TMB Planetary
9mm TMB Planetary
26mm Meade Series 4000 Super Plössl
35mm Orion Ultrascopic
2X Barlow Orion Shorty
Aluminum Hard Carry Case 07609
TeleVue TAC-1003 Air Chair
Celestron NightVision Flashlight 93588
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HfxObserver
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 11/12/04
Posts: 794
Loc: Regina, SK, Canada
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Yes definitely get in touch with the Mayors' office, if they know that money saving practices are also having other benefits they will be very interested to speak with you. The news paper should also know and be convinced to do an article, if other cities caught onto this idea a great movement could be afoot.
-Chris
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Chris
7X50 Vixen,22X100 Antares
80mm William Optics Megrez II ED
Santel MK6
Borg 125SD f6 (Pentax/Oasis version)
Tak-Lapides
Pentax XW's 40,20,14,10,5mm XO, 3.5, 3.8XP, Speers 5-8, 30mm Widescan III
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