You would never see something like that over a major metropolis without also removing "regular" particulate pollution and heat haze. And it would still not look like that to the bare eye. To a camera with a long enough exposure, sure.
In areas with low light pollution and a clear sky it really does look like that. Even without the moon there is plenty of light to walk around without a flashlight and the sky is really breathtaking. Granted, while you do get some color perception things look a little more black and white than those photos and you get a little low light static.
Edit: Though I have noticed some people have really poor night vision so your mileage may vary.
I'm so glad to hear that. I had sort of assumed those breathtaking photos you see of the Milky Way were the result of long exposure tricks.
It sounds kind of silly, but I live in a really terribly light-polluted area where you're lucky to see a dozen or so stars at night if it isn't cloudy, and my dream vacation is just to go out to Arizona or maybe the middle of the ocean, just to see the stars properly for once.
>* And it would still not look like that to the bare eye. To a camera with a long enough exposure, sure.*
Nope, it really DOES look like that (maybe with a little worse color rendition). Try a remote desert. You can see tons of stars clearly, the galactic haze, etc.
But you're right that in a city you'd also have to remove pollution and heat haze.
Astronaut Michael Collins, on looking back at Earth from a great distance: "I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified façade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied." (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/jul/HQ_09-164_Collins_s...)
These photos show the opposite.
It's a vast universe out there; more humans need to see it...
They key words are so clearly. It is definitely visible but without that many details. Also, these photos show way to many details near the horizont, even without the light pollution the thicknes of the atmosphere would have effect.
Sorry, you are wrong. In a truly dark site with well adapted eyes the Milky Way looks very much like this. I just got back from an observatory in the Oregon high desert, and the views were staggering. The dust lanes and many other details were clearly visible.
Actually I did see the Milky Way and some nebula but I don't remember which one. This was a long time ago.
The reason I could see them is that my eyes do adapt to the night really well. I can still see around me when it is really dark while most people start remarking that it is getting dark. A side effect is that when I'm well adapted to dark places and a car passes by I get blinded by the head lights.
Ever since I saw the first post on this here, I've wondered about automating this to some degree of accuracy. Contrast recognition on the skyline/cityscape image to delete the light-polluted sky I can't imagine would be too hard, a bit of math could tell you where in the world this sky would be in the next few hours to filter an image database search (provided the images had location and time data), and combining the two would be relatively simple. The biggest part I can't get around is maintaining the shot angle so it's EXACTLY the same sky. The image database, too, would have to be pretty extensive.
I strongly believe (but have not much to back it up) that turning nights into days as we do has consequences on our psyche and biological cycles. It blurs the distinction between night and day.
I wish my local councilmen would try to experiment no light at nights and see what comes out.
I think a fabulous night sky also makes people, especially kids, wonder about the universe, what our place is in it, and how it all came about. That's part of why it's such a shame that it's obscured for so many.
>Obviously, light pollution is the best kind because it goes away within minutes of turning off the source
Only we never "turn off the source".
>Who the fuck cares about this
Humans? People not absorved in their little microcosm? People not expecting everything to dazzle them with 10,000 volts in their pleasure centres to "care" about it?
I wish we could go lighter on nighttime light pollution.