The Night Sky

The most wonderful sight I’ve ever beheld is one that most human beings who ever lived saw countless times — the unobscured night sky on a clear moonless night undiminished by ambient light from human sources. This is an experience that, because of light pollution from highly populated areas, only a small percentage of people living today have had.  Some places, far from urban centers, can rightly be classified as “dark sky locations,” but yesterday I read that there may no longer be any place on Earth where the night sky is not affected by light reflected from satellites and space junk orbiting Earth.

      The upside of this is that one of these satellites is the Hubble Space Telescope, which has provided us with thousands of stunning images that most people who ever lived have never seen and few imagined could exist.