Star Light...

Last night I went out to cool off and look at the stars.  There wasn't a cloud in the sky and what joy it was to clearly see a great swath of brilliance, including the Milky Way.  I love Wikipedia's definition of the Milky Way's "Appearance from Earth," "All the stars that the eye can distinguish in the night sky are part of the Milky Way galaxy, but aside from these relatively nearby stars, the galaxy appears as a hazy band of white light arching around the entire celestial sphere."

Until I moved here, - one of the darkest places in the northeastern United States - I don't believe I'd really had a good look at the Milky Way since I was young child and my friends and I would camp out under the stars!  I didn't really realize how much I'd missed seeing those brilliant little specks until I could see them again clearly.   

This made me think about why I hadn't seen the Milky Way in all those years and I thought about the places I've lived over the years - Washington, DC; Okinawa, Japan; Alconbury, England; Denver, Colorado; Columbia, Maryland; and Berlin, Germany.  Sadly, in all of those places, light pollution has almost always made it hard to see stars clearly and certainly impossible to see the Milky Way.  

 Tomorrow night, I think I'm going to be sure to take my kids out with some blankets and pillows, we're going lie on the ground, and we're going get a really good look at the stars!  Truly the greatest show on earth!