Your thoughts, please.

OrbitalConfusion

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When you look up at the night sky, what do you feel? Is it just the same sky you have seen all your life or does it represent something else?

The universe, our place in it. How we got here, perhaps why we are here... Is there a purpose? Are we really destin to become space fairing or are we just supposed to enjoy our stay here in Sol and when the sun says its time we get wiped out like we were never here.

Its funny, No matter how bad of things we do, how much suffering or destruction we cause it will never affect space, atleast at this point in time. The sun can completely wipe everything clean.

For me, when I look up at the night sky I feel goose bumps. The questions I harbor go into rage mode like a schizophrenic who just jumped off his medication. Its like I am staring at the answers, they are all there, RIGHT infront of me, yet im powerless to reach them. I cant help it, The night sky to me is a love/hate relationship.. She constantly teases me in some awkard and uncomfortable way..

What about you? what are your thoughts and opinions?
 

PhantomCruiser

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It depends on where I am. When at work I'll look at the sky and I can generally pick out the big guys (Jupiter, Arcturus, Vega, Spica, etc) but there's too much light pollution to pick up a majority of sky.

When I leave home (to go to work), on a clear night I'll look up and and my thoughts are "Dammmmmmmmn! Look at that sky!"

I really enjoy a sky full of stars. Now that I've got a moderately decent "starter" telescope I enjoy even more. It's pretty cool seeing the color bands of Jupiter and notice all those tiny points of light behind Jupiter that make up just one tiny speck of our cosmos.

Out at sea, I thought I was going to go into shock when I couldn't pick out the big dipper because all those stars that I normally couldn't see were put on display. The wide band of light sweeping across the sky as I looked egde-on towards the center of the Milky Way. Words alone can't describe the feeling.
 

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I live in the California Bay Area, a place with light pollution and fog/overcast skies most of the time. I can't be bothered to go to a dark, rural area. So I never became an astronomer.

But sometimes, I can see the stars. And they are beautiful. The only constellation I can recognize most of the time is Orion.
 

Matias Saibene

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Good question,.
skstr5kdacztdmh6g.jpg

Usually when I see the night sky produces a number of very pleasant feelings. For example I remember instantly photography "A Pale Blue Dot" and reflections of Carl Sagan.
I also wonder if we are alone.
I think of the distant stars, the light of some stars was issued before there all we know and see exist, in fact some stars we see no longer exist.
I also think that what we see in Orbiter (like planets), he is out there and has larger dimensions than we imagine (in Orbiter distances are huge).
Anyway, the night sky is a source of inspiration for me.
5hpujwvithsq1l76g.jpg


Recently, on the terrace of my house I could identify the globular cluster NGC 1835, I remember that it looked like a bright spot in the sky.
 
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PhantomCruiser

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How far away is Yosemite? It's be worth a drive out to "the country". A clear night sky to me is better than therapy. "Can't be bothered" to make a special trip out there maybe, but if you happen to be out there anyway, look up.
 

Izack

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This afternoon (so, not the night sky, but I do live in a city, so light pollution eliminates most of the night sky's beauty anyway) after returning from work and a generally busy lifestyle, I looked up at the sky for no particular reason, and found I was looking directly at the Moon - specifically, Mare Tranquillitatis.

I immediately thought, simply, "People stood there and looked up at this place." It was amazing all over again, like when first truly grasping the notion so many years ago. The Moon (currently waxing, about halfway to full) was directly overhead. At that angle, with no nearby objects for scale, it looks miniscule, like half a dime glued to the sky. It's amazing, really. I've lost whatever expressive ability I may have had, but I stood there for some unknown time gawking like an idiot at the whole idea.

Regarding looking up at the sky and feeling powerless, or small, or insignificant, I recommend this video:

[ame="http://vimeo.com/38101676"]The Most Astounding Fact on Vimeo[/ame]

Good old de Grasse Tyson being the awesome person he is.
 

Codz

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The most beautiful skies I've ever seen were over South Dakota whilst driving on the interstate on a cross country trip. They were completely clear even with a windshield and headlights, and the Milky Way just seemed to stretch on forever over the Black Hills. In general, astronomy has always been a very special part of my experience, and it's always nice to take a telescope out for a bit, even under the moderately light polluted skies of metro Atlanta.

Honestly, it's hard not to think about the Universe outside of Earth. It's a bit like not ever thinking about the world outside of your city or home.
 

MattBaker

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The only specific memory of the nightsky I personally have is something like 1 1/2 years back. I was on holiday in the Bretagne, because I had the feeling I hit an all time low and needed a break somewhere I neither know nor understand anything. Due to my inability to keep a sleep pattern my trip back home (14 hours...) began in the late evening and driving from the Bretagne to Paris, Straßbourg etc. is pretty much driving east.
So while I was driving I saw a beautiful nearly full moon rising and making its way across the nightsky. A beautiful nightsky since western France is pretty rural (especially compared to a million people city I'm now living in...). All the time I couldn't stop thinking how that rock, drifting through outer space is the furthest humans have got, that people stood on that grey dustpan that is now guiding my way home into a hopefully better life, that humans travelled in a spacecraft for days, just like I'm travelling right now.

And when I got home and catched up on news I learned that Neil Armstrong died, that was quite a bummer.
 

mojoey

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How far away is Yosemite? It's be worth a drive out to "the country". A clear night sky to me is better than therapy. "Can't be bothered" to make a special trip out there maybe, but if you happen to be out there anyway, look up.

It's still a few hour drive away from the Bay Area.
 

Koloss

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I live in Germany in an industrial area called the "Kohlenpott". Cities like Bochum, Bottrop and so on have a very high density of heavy industry and so it is very hard to see many stars here. Even if the sky is cloudless.

The interest in spaceflight was always there - I was always fascinated by Apollo 11.

In the year 2000 - I was 16 - I was on a vacation with my parents in Denmark. We had a little house on the island "[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bornholm"]Bornholm[/ame]" and one evening I was out to drink some beer.
In the middle of the night the concentration of alcohol in my body was quite high :lol: and so I decided to go to beach and relax a bit.
I layed down on the sand and look up and I couldn't believe my eyes. Without exaggeration: It look exactly like this:

milky-way-2.jpg


I was so touched by the look of the sky. I just couldn't believe that I never saw this before and how this is possible.

This feeling I will never forget and wenn I look up in the sky today and see just a few stars I always remember this striking moment in Denmark and think to myself: Yeah, we are surely not alone here.
It's also a feeling of beeing "sheltered" in some way. I can't explain that. But what I look up I just feel protected. It's weird. But awesome :)
 

Quick_Nick

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"When a massive power outage struck southern California in the 1990s, Los Angeles residents reportedly called 911 to express alarm about strange clouds hovering overhead; they were seeing the Milky Way for the first time."
 

Koloss

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:rofl::rofl::rofl: Really? Did that happen?
 

AssemblyLanguage

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I will always remember seeing the comet Hale-Bopp on a clear winter night with a lunar eclipse at 9,000 ft. in Yosemite.
 

SolarLiner

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Here in my small town there is little light pollution, so the amount of stars by a clear winter night is jaw-dropping. Because yes, each time I look up at the sky and the stars, I loose my jaw. The numbers of stars, the number of galaxies out there containing all these stars that are orbited by even more planets, and still we only found a 0.0000000000001% of the tiny space that occupies the Milky Way.

However I'm surrounded by trees that blocks the view, recently there was a lunar eclipse just above the horizon, just behind a tree.

Yet I've been trying to see the Milky Way but didn't succeed with the naked eye. :(
 
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