<p>When I took a lighting landscaping class, I found it " enlightening" how light could actually make it harder to see.
I live in the city & I miss seeing stars like I did as a child.
Of course not only am I in the city, but much of the time it is cloudy.
When we used to go to rural Washington in the winter, it was breathtaking how many stars we could see.</p>
<p>We have a cottage on Lake Huron, Canada side. Sitting on the beach at night, it is a wide open sky for star gazing. So for us, it’s a 3 hours + drive for a night of star gazing. Hope to be looking “up” at the sky tonight!!!</p>
<p>The other day after working in the yard for a few hours, my girlfriend and I wound up lying down on our driveway to relax for a few. The sun had mostly gone down, and I challenged her to count as many stars as she could. After about 10-15 minutes I think we had gotten to about 10-15. If I had grown up here instead at the rural edge of the suburbs there’s no way my childhood dream would still have been to be an astronaut.</p>
<p>The first time I drove from Boulder to NY when I was in college I couldn’t believe my eyes when I say the night sky as we were driving through Nebraska and Iowa. Have never seen a sky like that anywhere else in the US - even up in the Adirondacks.</p>
<p>Good stars from back deck, great stars about an hour away. If you want to see a good meteor shower, the Perseids shower is coming up on August 11th and 12th. The best time to see is around midnight but you start seeing them earlier.</p>
<p>Some of my favorite vacation experiences have included hours of gazing at the Milky Way. Best spots: coast of Maine, coast of Australia, and Chaco Canyon.</p>
<p>While I live in the west, with less density, we also have less clear areas- more clouds, more trees. Not that I want the trees to go away!
We don’t travel much except to cities, so I really miss the stars.
I am hoping to have a nice camping trip soon though, hopefully to the ocean, where I can walk on the beach at night.</p>
<p>One of H & favorite places to go camping before we had kids was a state park on Whidbey Island. Not far from Seattle, with a nice lake for fishing, 30 miles of hiking trails and saltwater beaches.
But the Naval Air Station that has been on the island since the 40’s has gotten a * lot busier* in the last 10 years.
If it isnt all the teens & the sailors using it as the local pub, it is the constant jet traffic.
I understand they need to practice, but :(</p>
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<p>Fortunately, we still have one of the quietest places on earth ( by quiet, I mean by least mechanical/ human noise- cause nature is not quiet.), in Washington on the Olympic Peninsula.:)</p>
<p>I walk out the back door every night to look at the stars. Often I can see the Milky Way. I spent most of my life in areas with street lights, house lights, etc. I still remember the first time I was driving home at night to our current house, and there was a full moon. I was confused by the light for a few minutes as I knew there were no street lights. What I thought was a street light was actually moonlight. It’s amazing how the moon will light up the yard. </p>
<p>I don’t know how much longer we will live in this house, but I’ll miss the stars. They’ve become part of my routine. I never really was a rural kind of person, but over the past decade I’ve learned to love some things about living 15 minutes outside of town.</p>
<p>We will travel a number of hours by plane next month to Arizona, where we will have an incredible star show, something we only see a fraction of here in suburbia. I have even engaged an astronomer with amazing scopes to give us a “star tour.” We are all really looking forward to it.
P.S. When I glanced quickly at the title of this thread, I was sure it was about Hostess snack cakes…;)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>When I was young, we’d sleep out on a hill in what was the then the way out country of Oxford, MI and watch the meteors draw lines in the sky. One night, I woke up and there was no sky above me and I got scared … until I realized a horse was grazing with his, really her, belly over my head. I wasn’t worried the horse would step on me; they know where their feet are. But it was kind of strange.</p></li>
<li><p>Most people have never experienced the kind of darkness referred to in histories and stories. We read those stories and wonder how 16 guys couldn’t kill 1 or how so many fell to their deaths. Here’s how. My wife is scared of the really dark and one moonless night we left a pub that was inside a 13thC building - the cellar was the original jail cell. She stepped out as I held the door for someone and when the door closed she was gone. Completely invisible to me. I stepped towards her voice and the door behind me disappeared. I found her hand and held it against a tree and started to inch my way forward but stopped when I remembered there was a ditch somewhere in the trees. I couldn’t find the door. After maybe 4 or 5 minutes, I heard a car coming and as the lights lit up the street in the distance I ran for it. On another night, I went for a walk by myself up a little path. There was a little moon but a rain cloud came in and it went so dark I couldn’t tell what direction I was moving. So I squatted in the road, getting wet and hoping the moon would come out. Instead a dog came by. I heard his collar jingle before I saw him. I lightly grabbed hold of his collar and he walked me to the edge of the pavement. I felt my way back from there. We never experience this kind of darkness.</p></li>
<li><p>If you want total darkness, go down in a coal mine. The Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour in Allentown, PA ends with a talk near the escape pod about lighting levels of the past versus present. Here’s what it was like with this kind of light - and you can barely see. Then the lights go out. You can put your finger directly in front of your eye and not see it. It can be terrifying; it’s chilly and absolutely, completely void of light other than what your head makes inside itself. My littlest kid grabbed my hand sooooo hard.</p></li>
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<p>Every single time when my son (living in Manhattan) comes home, he gets out of the car straight from the airport and looks up at the sky to see the stars from our driveway and takes many deep breaths to smell the clean ocean air.</p>
<p>If you live in suburban VA, MD, or Philly, Cherry Springs is defnitely worth the trip. This a dark-sky park, with berms to shade from headlights, no lights w/o red filters permitted, etc…You can camp there overnight. I didn 't check, but I assume their calendar of events includes viewing the Perseids in August.</p>
<p>emeraldkity - I know how you feel! For all the beauty in our city the stars are elusive. On occasion I have to get up in the middle of the night to let the dog outside and there are many more stars visible at about 4am. Since I’m annoyed at the dog I take the time to look up and it makes it worthwhile. :)</p>
<p>We can see some from our house, but not as many as I’d like. We are in Florida right now in an ocean front condo, and the stars here are unbelievable! It’s my favorite thing about being here.</p>
<p>Suburban DC is not the best place for stargazing, so I always take advantage of looking at the big,clear sky when I am visiting family in the rural Midwest.</p>
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