No Leonoids in New York

Years ago, when I must have been in middle school, we took a family white-water rafting/summer camping trip on the Colorado River. One night, as all of us (two guides, and another family) sat around a campfire on the side of the riverbank, I remember staring up in amazement at the Milky Way Galaxy overhead and its clusters of sparkly star-clouds. Miles away from civilization, that night sky in particular looked strangely foreign to me and unlike any I had ever seen before on the East Coast. It was alien-like. Raw. Three-dimensional. Then suddenly, in a single fleeting moment that was over just as quickly as it began, we witnessed the most breathtaking astronomical occurrence of our lives:

It was a shooting star. Blazing across the heavens in a spectacle of white, red, fiery orange, purples and pinks, it arced over our heads momentarily, then disappeared into the horizon. It was such an intense spectacle, to this day I can still hear the "swoosh" of its mass and particles burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.

Fast forward to the pre-dawn hours of this morning, November 17, 2009 and North America's "showy peak" viewing of the Leonoid Meteor Shower. Well, you guessed it. There was nothing for this high-rise living New Yorker to see. The sky is always empty and black, the streets glaring and bright in this city. One finds neither silence nor complete darkness, and it saddens me that a starry night sky in major cities around the world has simply disappeared.

A National Geographic article titled, "Our Vanishing Night," describes light pollution in the following context:

"In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze that mirrors our fear of the dark and resembles the urban glow of dystopian science fiction. We've grown so used to this pervasive orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost. And yet above the city's pale ceiling lies the rest of the universe, utterly undiminished by the light we waste—a bright shoal of stars and planets and galaxies, shining in seemingly infinite darkness."

Map of Earth at Night

While there are certainly trade-offs of living in a bustling metropolis versus a rural area, it's humbling to stargaze when you can actually see the stars in all their glory. It is only when doing this, that one can truly FEEL the overwhelming presence of our vast galaxy. I like to imagine what Earth's night sky must have looked like as viewed from ancient cities thousands of years ago. How beautiful, powerful, and inexplicable it must have been. It was, after all, a mystical realm of curiosity and wonder. In some areas of the planet untouched by man's light pollution, the night sky can still be viewed the same way it has been for millions of years.

Science and technology have allowed us to gaze deeper and deeper into the Universe. Time will only tell what the next big galactic discovery will be. But with your naked eye, take the time to venture away from the din of street lights and glaring LED-lit advertisements. It can be an awe-inspring experience that might just turn into one of the most memorable moments of your life.