this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it (www.space.com)
submitted 1 year ago by FlyingSquid to c/technology
92 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Given the harmful effects of light pollution, a pair of astronomers has coined a new term to help focus efforts to combat it. Their term, as reported in a brief paper in the preprint database arXiv and a letter to the journal Science, is "noctalgia." In general, it means "sky grief," and it captures the collective pain we are experiencing as we continue to lose access to the night sky.

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[–] cheese_greater 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Try in a small town. Seriously, tho villages are better. Go in the backroads, you'll have plenty of sky and stars to get lost in.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You'd be surprised how much "bleeding" there is. You also can't scope in certain directions because of even really far off cities. You're often forced into a specific cone.

[–] cheese_greater 2 points 1 year ago

Perfection is the enemy of "good-enough and be able to experience in this lifetime"

[–] FlyingSquid 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only in the most remote deserts, wilderness areas and oceans can you find a sky as dark as our ancestors knew them.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

The article is about how there's less of it over time. Areas that were once nice (ex. Great views over the water or over a nice field) no longer work because of nearby light pollution.

[–] Sanctus 8 points 1 year ago

There are few places left on Earth to see an unpolluted night sky. Definitely nowhere near civilization. On top of that, light pollution still drowns out dimmer objects permanently. We are blinding ourselves globally. To our ancestors the sky was a living light show. Its no mystery why they thought gods lived there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

In densely populated areas you have to move quite far out to find such places. Like, check a light pollution map and then scroll into central Europe, like around the Netherlands and western Germany. It's all just a big red blob.