re vandalizing the sky newsgroups sci astro sci space subject re vandalizing the sky my apologies if this is a re post i submitted it on friday but got a message that my post might not have gone out considering the confusing spitting contest over rights there are too inalienable rights damn it the majority can be just as destructive of liberty as a despot i suspect that my post did not get out of my site i ain t saying that dark skies are included in these rights although we can only preserve any rights by exercising them anyway here are my thoughts on this i d like to add that some of the protests do not come from a strictly practical consideration of what pollution levels are acceptable for research activities by professional astronomers some of what i would complain about is rooted in aesthetics many readers may never have known a time where the heavens were pristine sacred unsullied by the actions of humans the space between the stars as profoundly black as an abyss can be with full horizons and a pure sky one could look out upon half of all creation at a time none of which had any connection with the petty matters of man any lights were supplied solely by nature uncorruptable by men whole religions were based on mortal man somehow getting up there and becoming immortal as the stars whether by apotheosis or a belief in an afterlife the space age changed all that the effect of the first sputniks and echo etc on this view could only happen once to see a light crossing the night sky and know it was put there by us puny people is still impressive and the sense of size one gets by assimilating the scales involved is also awesome even if the few hundreds or thousands of miles involved is still dwarfed by the rest of the universe but there is still a hunger for the pure beauty of a virgin sky yes i know aircraft are almost always in sight i have to live in a very populated area miles from an international airport currently where light pollution on the ground is ghastly the impact of humans is so extreme here virtually no place exists that has not been shaped sculpted modified trashed or whipped into shape by the hands of man in some places the only life forms larger than bacteria are humans cockroaches and squirrels or rats i visited some friends up in the appalacian mountains one weekend getting away from it all paved roads indoor plumbing malls and it felt good for a while then i quickly noticed the hollow was directly under the main flight path into dulles miles to the east their security light didn t help matters much either but i ve heard the artic wilderness gets lots of high air traffic so i know the skies are rarely perfect but there is still this desire to see a place that man hasn t fouled in some way i mean they ve been trying this forever like concerning tesla s idea to banish night wow i don t watch commercial television but i can imagine just how disgusting beer truck or hemmorrhoid ointment advertisements would be if seen up so high if ya gotta make a buck on it displaying products in heaven at least consider the reactions from those for whom the sky is a last beautiful refuge from the baseness of modern life to be open about this though i have here my listing of the passage of hst in the evening sky for this weekend tonight friday at p m edt it will reach an altitude of degrees on the local meridian from baltimore vicinity i ll be trying to see it if i can it is my mealticket after all so i suppose i could be called an elitist for supporting this intrusion on the night sky while complaining about billboards proposed by others be that as it may i think my point about a desire for beauty is valid even if it can t ever be perfectly achieved regards wm hathaway baltimore md p s added tuesday this again is not a rights vs reality tome just a warning that someone into destroying beauty had better know that other people may not accept it without a complaint
