OK. In the movie "Out of Africa", the character Denys FinchHatton is sitting around a safari campfire with Karen Blixen and he states, "I don't know the science behind it, but the stars are brighter in Africa." Is there something to this? Kenya straddles the equator so, does the Earth's equatorial bulge have anything to do with it? Is the atmosphere thinner at the equator?

My theory is this: Because he was from cloudy, foggy England, he never really saw the stars before coming to Africa. And he might have been at altitude in Kenya.

Or maybe it was just a goofy line of dialog that the screenwriter threw in....

Tim

P.S. Please - no movie critiques!!!

The stars are brighter anytime you get away from civilization (and all the light and air pollution - England was particularly bad back when they primarily burned coal for everything).

You can get the same effect now by going into the country or up in Canada away from all the towns - I used to go fishing up north of Toronto every year and the skies were 3-D spectacular when the nearest town is 40miles away.

Thinner atmosphere is a good way tho... that's why they build observatories now on top of mountains, to get them up out of as much air as possible (for example, on Muana Kea in Hawaii and others in Chile and Argentina.

Another way to read it is along the line of "A sandwich always tastes better if someone else makes it". It may have just meant that that character loved being in Africa more than any other location. The air was better, the stars were brighter, the days were more fulfilling. I take it to be poetic license.

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Geographically speaking I have been to Africa, Canary Islands, La Palma, yes, where NOT is. I was really impressed by the brightness of the stars there and of the Milky Way, especially during the morning. I used to watch them from Santa Cruz, yes, but that’s a very small town and the artificial lights are orange and deem just because of so many telescopes on the Roque de los Muchachos. So, from my own experience I can say that stars are brighter there.

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