Oh, the joy of a blackout. With skies dark here in Cleveland and everywhere within hundreds of miles, I kept my kids up late. Not since the turn of the 20th century have we had an opportunity to see the sky like we will tonight, I told them. With clear skies (a rarity in cloudy Cleveland), it seemed that everything would come together.

With much anticipation of seeing the Milky Way in all of its reverant glory, as it was meant to be seen, as it is seen by natives on remote islands, we went out to the front yard at 9:30. Immediately, we were rewarded with a satellite transiting across the sky. My oldest son (9 yrs old) exclaimed that it was the ISS. It probably wasn't, but I left that to his imagination.

Then, about 9:45 after seeing a couple more satellites and a couple of streaks from "shooting stars", the skies darkened substantially and the Milky Way was becoming visible. My kids had never seen it before and it was a real treat to hear them ponder among themselves the wonder of what they were seeing.

Something most horrible happened at about 10pm, the skies began to gradually get brighter. At first, I was "concerned" that power was beginning to be restored in the city and that our expedition was over. Instead, a very bright moon was rising.

A once in a lifetime opportunity cut short by the rising of the moon. But, for 30 brief minutes, the view was spectacular. I hope some of you other "lucky" people in the northeast and midwest had similar experiences.

I'm curious if anyone measured the sky from say, Times Square. I suppose that is perhaps magnitude -1 or -2 on a normal night ( of course when you talk about Times Square, you have to use a very loose definition of normal). I know that from Central Philadelphia the skies are perhaps magnitude 1 (you can see Orion's Belt and a few other stars, but that's about it.

Yes indeed! and the only light pollution last night was from the embers shot up from a neighbours backyard fire.

Surely the Moon proved to be a bit of light pollution.

The moon and mars were obscured by tall trees for a while.

True that the trees obscured for a while, but by 10pm, the horizons were gaining a bit of a bluish tinge and the Milky Way was fading.

It proved to be a lot of light pollution. And don't call me Shirley.

I went out for a while to look, and the moon really was making things pretty bright. I actually opened up my shades inside to let some light in. Still, it was a lot starrier than normal. I only wish I hadn't lost my glasses; everything was a little fuzzy.

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Neither love nor money makes the world go round.
Unfortunately, we're down to about 17 ounces of the highly unstable stuff that does.

Are you drunk?

I believe he was quoting Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielson) from the movie Airplane!. :wink:

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T. Anderson

Hi Ulster,

Where in Cleveland do you live? The skies out here in Mesopotamia, 30 miles east of Cleveland are pretty dark and the Milky Way is GORGEOUS!
Bring the kids! Drop me a line.


(:raig

CMiller@ssd.com

Actually I'm not too far from Mesopotamia. I'm in Chardon. We used to go out to Meso to see the Civil War reenactment. Are they still doing that?

You mean you're not from Ulster? I figured from your name that you were Northern Irish.