Who Stole the Stars?

[Colwyn]

Recently we stayed for a week in an inland village on Rhodes. There was no industry nearby and we barely saw a cloud all week. At night when we looked up we could see one star. Yes, one.

I recall when I was a boy scout in Bristol and we went out out into the countryside to go camping the sky was full of stars and the Milky Way fulfilled its poetic requirement to look like a white silk scarf thrown carelessly across the sky. More recently, a few years ago, we stopped for the night in Beycik - a mountain village on the Lycian Trail high above Tekrova, a little way south of Kemer on the west coast of the Tepe Peninsula. As night fell the stars emerged in their thousands and the Milky Way was bright across the sky. So strongly did the stars shine that they appeared to hang a mere 100ft over our heads; to be so close as to oppress us with their perceived weightiness. We could easily see how, for thousands of years, humans were in awe of the majesty of the firmament. Today, in the UK and many other places, it is barely visible. Unless they have visited remote mountainous areas young people today will have never seen this awesome sight and stared in wonderment. We have lost a great deal.

So who stole it? I guess we did: with our industry and our fossil fuel consumption causing air pollution; and all of our illuminating lamps creating light pollution. Our decisions eradicated the splendour of the night sky. I miss it.

[Highlander]

Super post with this beautiful section 

and the Milky Way fulfilled its poetic requirement to look like a white silk scarf thrown carelessly across the sky.

[Colwyn]

I thought Milky Way/silk scarf was a well known analogy so I looked it up so I could cite the author for you, or a least suggest the origin. I found nothing. Perhaps it was just the way I thought about it when younger though how I came to know what a silk scarf might look like I can't think. I surprise myself.

[heather07]

  http://www.poetryvlog.com/text%20of%20poems/etabios_from_the.html

Third verse Colwyn

[Colwyn]

Thanks Heather. This can't be the source of my thoughts however since it was written only a few years ago - certainly not in my youth.

[johntaylor49]

Sigh, yes I remember seeing the stars as a child and had a chart with them on. Not as many as you will remember of course as there was less pollution when Baden-Powell was around   

Seriously it is a shame, I once stopped the Jeep between Hofuf and Riyadh in the middle of the Arabian Desert and we got out and looked up on a clear november night, amazing, the whole sky a mass of stars, bloody chilly though so didnt stay for long! Nearest place of any size must have been 300miles away so no backlight to spoil it at all!

Meldrew

[buddy]

If you have an i-phone/pad try downloading the 'Sky Walk' ap.

I know its no substitute for the real thing, but great for star and planet spotting.  

[Scunner]

I remember during our years - and particularly summers - in Turkey with great fondness the inefficiency of TEDAS (i.e. the number of power cuts) - and on some summer nights that would send us outside after midnight because the AC was obviously off and the only way to cool down was to sit on the steps of the pool at something like 2am.

Even now, 4 years on, the girls remember how the lack of street/urban lighting resulted in star filled skies - and we still talk of how we sat outside in the pool watching shooting stars. It maybe doesn't sound like much, but it beats playstations and Sky TV   

[grizabella]

When I first moved over to Turkey I stayed in a small village called Adrassan near Mount Olympus.There was no light polution at night and we would sit and watch the sky for ages.We often saw comets flying over.When I visit my friend there we still spend most evenings sipping a glass of wine and star gazing.

[paulc1]

we went to the maldives last year and ive never seen stars like i saw there, it was just amazingly beautiful , no light pollution , you could sit outside on the beach late at night, with a cocktail in one hand , just watching the stars , amazing  god wish i was there now