I posted this at the end of September and have had an opportunity to report my own stellar magnitude 7 visible skies. The average human eye can see down to magnitude 6.

I commented about the human airborne aerosols, and just plain dust you busy primates have contributed. But most of you do not have skies or eyes to take advantage of the kinds of skies routinely occurring here where I live above 7500 feet in Colorado. Since I am old, I remember a time when the weather was very different than it is now. I recall when the cost of electricity was considered before turning on a light -- and yard or night time security lighting or commercial lighting was directed where needed, not into the sky or to trespass.

Population growth -- and our numbers is the species current and ongoing problem. The pollution caused by and continued by the increasing use of fossil fuels, fossil carbon, will cause deaths of millions -- avoidable with a slightly different outlook for our species. In that scenario, wrong directions are taken to account, and actions that do not do the species long term good -- are accounted for. In addition to theft of the night, charges include the mass extinctions caused by human actions upon the planet. I suggest a toll be exacted from those who damage the planet and all species -- rather than allowing the concept of personal profit with no responsibility to continue to be seen as allowable and good. Rachel Carson would have fully understood this.

The theft of your night-time skies is but a further symptom of what is wrong.

You pollute the day AND the night.

I am NOT inviting you to this State. Why? Well, I can see evidence of you in the dust that combines with misdirected and wasteful energy even in my skies. But the dust and aerosols are offensive. There are too many of you! stirring it up and then polluting the air with CO2 and climate change.

But you have one more night!!

If you think this is a joking matter, read on.

If you are a writer. . .join me here:

http://www.xomba.com/referral/77777d6e

TO HELP THE PLANET, VISIT and Participate in the Star Count.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/starcount/

Half of the human population now lives in urban centers -- some of the nastiest, dirtiest, most un-inviting and uninhabitable places on Earth. You think your urban or suburban area is nice crime free and live-able? How much money does it take to live there? and how much pollution does it contribute to the planet, overall? Can you see any stars at night -- like your ancestors from 100 years ago did?

Help reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere.

(How? Commercial entities and even your neighbor's lights or your own lights that offensively trespass are at issue. When someone lighting your property, causing glaring light to fall onto your property and into your eyes, these lights are powered mostly by Fossil Fuel. These lights are powered by fossil Carbon we could save the atmosphere from absorbing if we begin by turning them off or down, or directing the energy only where it is legally allowed. Turn a mess of these lights down and direct them to light the intended area and not someone else's area or property and this will, in the long run, save money and air.)

You have a chance to help with research that will show how polluted with light the locale in which you live has become at night. But it is a global effort. (This effort will also contribute to the saving of energy; it will help cut waste and lower the CO2 contribution from fossil fuels, and bring back the vanishing star-filled night-time sky.) Make your observations and report them any time during the October 1 through October 15, 2007 time period and do science by looking at the night skies where you live, and reporting.)

Visit this web site to participate. Just do it. There are some simple instructions for a project you can participate in and see results from.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/starcount/

Many of you live in cities that blot out the stars with light that is directed upward as well as horizontally into your eyes. Flying over them at night and at altitude is a thrill, but the glowing waste of energy deprives everyone within the city's area of the heritage of the preceding million human years.

--------------- FOR THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE --------------

Image: Wickipedia. (Look up Deneb)

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/starcount/constellations_nh.html

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you will be asked to observe the constellation Cygnus, the Swan, a part of which contains the asterism familiar to many as the Northern Cross and to record and forward your observations.

If you go outside about an hour after sunset and look straight up, you should see three very bright stars. which form the Summer Triangle. The one closest to the point directly overhead (the Zenith) is called Deneb, and represents the Swan's tail in the constellation Cygnus. The brightest star of the Summer triangle is Vega. (Vega, Altair and Deneb comprise the Summer Triangle) The westernmost star in the triangle is Vega, a star the Sun is drifting toward.

In the movie made from Carl Sagan's novel "Contact", Vega is the source of the coded signal which is received with the information on how to build the "Machine" that Jodie Foster takes to the center of the Galaxy. Vega is about 26 light years distant. The galactic center is nearly 25,000 light years distant.

What you will want for your report is to know what the dimmest star you can see is -- by following the research guidelines. This is a possible family thing to do, and each member might have their own estimate. After you familiarize yourself with the star charts you can print out -- and compare the numbers of the stars from the charts you are going to submit to the research project, then have some more fun.

If you have binoculars, find something to recline on and look with the binoculars at the star located where the long and short members of the Northern Cross meet. Your binoculars will reveal hundreds of stars in a sky that is not overly light-polluted.

If you take a small telescope, like a good quality spotting scope, out with you and point it to the head of the Swan, which is also the foot of the cross, with about 30X magnification or more(say 100X) you will see a beautiful orange star and a beautiful blue star. This is Albireo, and it is an "optical double" star, where the two stars are not orbiting each other, tied by gravitation -- since they just lined up in the sky close to each other. It is one of the visual "treats" in the sky!

(Correction to myself, as well as correcting my spelling. According to Wikipedia, recent studies indicate the two stars "are" gravitationally linked -- and further that the Orange (yellow) star is a close true double -- but it takes exceptional seeing and about 20-inch + scope to see it.)

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albireo

Deneb, the bright star at the top of the Northern Cross(the Tail of the Swan),is called in astronomical parlance, Alpha Cygnus, brightest star in Cygnus, and is a truly very bright distant white-bluish supergiant star producing prodigious amounts of energy -- at a distance of 3200 light years (estimates range from 2100 to 7400 or so light years). It is perhaps the brightest star that is "truly a bright star," you will easily see from the northern hemisphere with the unaided eye. Deneb is a good star to be 3200 light years from. If it were 30 or 35 light years away, it would now be 35 times brighter than Venus, and only surpassed in the sky by Motorola Iridium Satellite flashes (barely); very bright and rare fireball meteors; the Moon, and the Sun.

Deneb will likely go supernova in several million years as it evolves further. Good star to keep at a distance.

When it pops off as a supernova, it could reach visual (apparent) magnitude of -11 or so. It will be visible from Earth. Hopefully someone will still be here and human to see it and understand it.

SUPERNOVA and HYPERNOVA (superlatives and hyperlatives)

A disturbingly bright potentially dangerous "Hypernova" will be visible eventually in Southern hemisphere skies. It is the star called Eta Carina, and when it "supernova's" it will be dangerously spectacular, since it is only roughly 7500 LY from us. It could have already popped off and the light just has not yet reached us. It is expected to go off as a "Hypernova," the brightest possible explosion of a star, about 100 times brighter than the brightest "ordinary" supernova. When that happens, damage here on Earth "should" be small. Such an explosion at the current distance would yield an apparition of magnitude -16 or more, around 15.85 times as bright as the full moon. It would be nice to be many light years away from such an explosion.

When Deneb explodes, it will not be as dangerous to Earth, and to life upon it as Eta Carina. Under the current evolution of Eta Carina, the star could explode within the next 10 and 20 thousand years, or it could be 10 times that amount of time -- "if" it hasn't yet exploded.

See notes below where stars that are 100 billion times brighter than the sun -- outshine entire galaxies -- are being found and recognized. These are bad stars to be near if you live by Earth-life standard composition -- when they detonate.

http://www.utexas.edu/opa/news/2007/10/mcdonald10.php

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1012/2

A human perspective for this would be: could we or Earth get rid of (re-sequester) our increased atmospheric CO2 burden "before" the Eta Carina Hypernova detonates? It would not surprise me that Eta Carina will explode before we or Earth gets the excess CO2 out of our air. We on the northern continents can't see Eta Carina from our higher latitudes. It is nearly 60 degrees south of the celestial equator. That means you need to be south of 30 degrees north on Earth to just see it.

But Deneb will detonate in less than a few million years!

------ FOR THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE ------

Image: Wikipedia. (Look up Sagittarius the constellation!)

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere you would observe the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer,which includes the "asterism" the Teapot.

The guide to Finding Sagittarius makes it easy.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/starcount/constellations_sh.html

If you go outside about an hour after sunset and look west, you should be able to find the Teapot roughly halfway between the horizon and the zenith. Sagittarius is larger than the "teapot" and when you look toward it you are looking into the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy -- our "home" galaxy containing 400 billion or so stars. Sagittarius is rich with stars! And looking in that direction there are many cloudy, dusty nebula
; globular clusters galore, star forming regions, with a great many of those 400 billion stars that make up our home galaxy.

In the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius, at the heart of the Galaxy is a super massive black hole. All decent galaxies harbor one. Our Galaxy's black hole is pretty quiet, and does not appear to be eating a lot at the moment, well, 25,000 years ago. With binoculars or telescope, many objects and stars can be viewed. But what can you see with unaided eye?

But go ahead and make your light-polluted-sky observations. It only takes a few minutes outside at night.

The illustrations at the website with the three panels shows the same area of the night sky. The left hand image is what you would see under average conditions. The middle image shows the Archer and the right hand image shows the Teapot.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/starcount/

Come on! Even if you can't see many stars, you can help to recover the sky with your observations. I like the night sky and know it reasonably well (Very) and live where I have dark skies. It was only my distant neighbors with commercial lighting that had been bothersome; but I engaged the people and the county powers to encourage enactment of some light pollution controls, and the offending neighbor turned his lights to light the work area and not my property 1 mile away.

I'm "lucky." Well, I wanted the chance, made the choice of where to live. I can have occasional absolutely clear non-local light-polluted skies -- and your help in research can lead to local actions to recapture the night sky.

Visit also

http://www.darksky.org/

There you can locate sample ordinances your community can use to save otherwise wasted energy lighting up the night sky. The power company really won't like you, though they may pretend to . . . But be that as it may, eventually they will be brought to realism.

Help do the research. Your input is likely more important than mine, since I live in an area of little light pollution since there are few people.

My complaint with the rest of the population is the anthropogenically driven CO2 climate change which clouds my once phenomenally clear dry dark skies. In addition, the fact that many billions of people stir dust and aerosols into the sky and light will be reflected and cheat all of us of the stars.