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See the original image at apod.nasa.gov

Astronomy Picture of the Day: A Protected Night Sky

apod.nasa.gov — This sky is protected. Yesterday marked the 50 year anniversary of the first lighting ordinance ever enacted, which restricted searchlight advertisements from sweeping the night skies above Flagstaff, Arizona, USA.

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  • DAP1, on 04/16/2008, -1/+17What an inspiration for us all to get the night sky protected
    • TyroPyro, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6It really is! It's sad that so many people never see the Milky Way as it was seen up until the 1900s. While there is a little extended exposure in this photo, it is not that far from what you would experience with your own eyes. Most people just can't believe that until they actually see it.

      Next time you are choosing outdoor lighting, think about not spamming the sky with your light. The international Dark Sky Association has a guide: http://www.darksky.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=56404 ...
      • nospinhere, on 04/16/2008, -1/+5I think that instead of flashlights we should have darklights. So if we want it dark all we have to do is just point it where we want to block the light.
      • Ndiggnation, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1I can't believe the sky looks like that outside of the city. I live in the midwest, in a fairly large city, but it's not hard to get deep into the boonies here. All the times I've been away from they city I've never seen the sky look anything remotely like that, wow. I have to get out west sometime..
        • Ndiggnation, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1P.S. I see that it probably doesn't look quite like that, from down-thread, having to do with shutter speed and other phtographic techniques.
    • danimator02, on 04/16/2008, -5/+0Wow, neato-cool! Too bad the image is COMPLETELY PHOTOSHOPPED!!! >:(

      Check out the full-res. Look at the tree-line that's in the clouds, then the one that's in the stars. It goes from individual trees, to a clean-cut photoshop marquee-select line. That ENTIRE MOUNTAIN RANGE + cloud has been cut and pasted into the foreground of a star field image! The stars have been comp'd on!! :mad:
      • Ndiggnation, on 04/16/2008, -1/+3Yes, NASA often uses Photoshop to make completely fake pictures..
      • mizarone, on 04/16/2008, -0/+2Oh, you are soooo right! I mean, it's just impossible to have a perfectly clear sky in a rural area!
      • rkef, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1spherical aberration
  • JeeBs, on 04/16/2008, -1/+24Dugg for Flagstaff enacting legislation to keep the skies dark. Awesome night sky view!
  • cybrspin, on 04/16/2008, -0/+7breathtaking :)
  • OneLess, on 04/16/2008, -0/+14That's great, I absolutely hate light pollution. I actually got to get away to a relatively rural place last summer to watch the Perseids, but from where I am right now, you can only see stars around the brightness of the basic 8 of Orion :(

    Awesome lenticular cloud too!
  • maybeishould, on 04/16/2008, -3/+2At first I thought the "cloud" was the alien ship from Independence Day. Whew.
    • unreg, on 04/16/2008, -1/+4I was going for a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" angle
  • Sirtork, on 04/16/2008, -0/+5cool pic I have been fortunate to have vacationed in flagstaff many times. excellent city for night sky observing.
  • vroom101, on 04/16/2008, -3/+6http://chamorrobible.org/images/photos/gpw-2006102 ... Via photo 2 at http://chamorrobible.org/gpw/gpw-20061021.htm
  • Tjoori, on 04/16/2008, -1/+2Very cool.
  • novask, on 04/16/2008, -0/+8I never knew the sky looked like that, to me it was always pitch black with a few stars here and there. I wonder what else I've been missing out on.
  • bogoslav, on 04/16/2008, -0/+5Damn, so many stars! I thought such photos could be taken only from space.
    • godzilla808, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1Flagstaff's elevation is about 7000 feet, so it's a little closer to space than some other places! :o)
  • v666, on 04/16/2008, -0/+4that is one beautiful shot
  • Sogui, on 04/16/2008, -1/+5Is this the work of some fancy photo skills? Even without light pollution I can't imagine the night sky ever looking like this.
    • drapelyk, on 04/16/2008, -1/+7Yes. And some fancy photo equipment. You cannot see that amount of stars without using a long shutter speed, and you cannot take a clear picture of the stars without some form of apparatus to slowly rotate the camera in sync with the earths rotation.
  • dolanman, on 04/16/2008, -0/+5if only our eyes had shutter speeds so we could actually see that sky
  • dannymb877, on 04/16/2008, -3/+3I go to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ... it doesn't look like that, trust me. On a night without a moon, there are a lot a lot of stars... but not to this point. It's a cool picture nonetheless.

    Fact of the Day: Pluto was discovered in Flagstaff, AZ.
    • dannymb877, on 04/16/2008, -1/+2But dugg for mentioning little known Flagstaff, AZ...

      Oh, other Fact of the Day: The scene in Forest Gump when he says "***** happens," That was in Flagstaff too.
      • Godlike, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1Flagstaff is at 17 and 40 and is not really 'little known'.

        There are pretty much only 3 metro areas of any kind in AZ and Flagstaff is one of them.

        Not that I really care for any reason... just sayin...
    • consoneo, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1They're there, you just have to be a camera to see it :) It's a long exposure.
    • Slade605, on 04/16/2008, -0/+2Correction, Pluto was discovered in space.
      /smartass
    • toddm92, on 04/16/2008, -0/+0Yes, by an American astronomer. Can you name him?
    • elisadeng, on 04/17/2008, -0/+1wish u are not telling the truth ,the sky do be amazing
  • louiebaur, on 04/16/2008, -3/+1Cool picture
  • youtellme8, on 04/16/2008, -1/+2Light and noise pollution are always passed over, but both dramatically reduce the peacefulness and magic of our daily lives. Props to Flagstaff.
  • elcuervo525, on 04/16/2008, -0/+0Now, that's an spectacular shot.
  • lexmillie, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1Very beautiful photo. I envy astronauts - they see this sky every time they are in space.
  • takeo1775, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1his or her camera please...
  • whyufail, on 04/16/2008, -0/+2It's full of stars...
  • DesireWealth2, on 04/16/2008, -0/+2Considering Flagstaff has a population of about 60k, it is great to hear that 50 years ago, they saw the light, so to speak....and banned annoying light pollution. I wonder if we can turn it around for other cities on our planet. Anyway, this is a way cool picture.
  • danimator02, on 04/16/2008, -3/+3So NASA is doctoring photos now to show off the 'effects' of government policies? That 'night sky' is a composite of an Arizona landscape and a random star field.

    Click the high-res image and have a look:

    It's a photoshop, and not an especially good one. Look at the mountain range line that meets the clouds, then see how it cuts off in a clean marquee line (with traces of the original clouds.. oy vey) once we get to the 'stars'. Look at the uniform opacity/gaussian blur of the cloud itself. Even the cloud has been tailor-made for dramatic effect. >:(

    This was a mountain on a cloudy day cut out into the dramatic shape we see, and composited onto a long-exposure starfield. It's a complete and utter fabrication.

    NASA? wtf, guys? You're worrying me. Isnt there some government policy that you can't.. you know.. make this ***** up and say "Look what our policies are doing!"
    • Ibox, on 04/16/2008, -1/+2I think the Shop look is from the long shutter speed.??? maybe? still pretty tho.
    • MedHead, on 04/16/2008, -1/+1It does appear to have some clone stamping where the left side of the cloud meets the mountain. It does look like some clouds were cut off there, too.
    • danimator02, on 04/16/2008, -2/+0It's not a shutter-speed issue. The entire mountain range and clouds have been cut and pasted into a sky background.
    • rkef, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1spherical aberration
    • zhimbo, on 04/16/2008, -0/+2Long exposures of the sky MUST be shopped onto a landscape, there's no way to get both at the same time.. The long exposure that tracks the sky would end up blurring the horizon. An untracked shot would keep the landscape sharp but result in star trails and blur in the sky.
    • sgupt, on 04/17/2008, -0/+3hey dumbass, THESE ARE NOT NASA PHOTOGRAPHS, so don't start blaming them

      and of course its shopped, its impossible to take a scene like that in one shot.
  • Stargeezer, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1Magnificent! But whether it's photoshopped or not seems irrelevant. We must combine our efforts and put an end to light pollution in whatever way we can. Lighting laws alone are not the solution to light pollution. We must do much more. See what you can do here:
    http://www.darkskyinitiative.org
    Sunny Days and Milky Way Nights.
  • Observer001, on 04/16/2008, -0/+2Haven't seen anything so beautiful in months. It makes me wish I'd had perfect eyes as a kid so I could've grown to be a pilot or, universe allowing, an astronaut. Sometimes I curse that I was born a cripple to the heavens and the skies.
    • joshhan, on 04/16/2008, -0/+3Try Lasik. There is even a version that has been approved by NASA.
      • Observer001, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1It would work, but I'm poor and now probably too old to learn all the skills I'd need. Thank you, all the same.
  • danimator02, on 04/16/2008, -2/+0When we're saying that it doesn't matter that state agencies are doctoring data for public policy reasons, we're in a scary place indeed.

    The fact that nasa's forging pics is something that needs to be digg'd. It's not a minor alteration or an increase in contrast, that entire picture *never existed*. I
    • zhimbo, on 04/16/2008, -0/+1"State agencies" didn't doctor this. This site picks pictures from elsewhere. Also ALL shots of the night sky with a landscape are composites - there's no way to get them in the same shot - one requires a still camera, the other a tracking camera. There's nothing "shady" going on - it's just how such pictures are made.
  • jprez, on 04/16/2008, -3/+1yea.... this is a realy -shopped picture.
  • Shoogle, on 04/16/2008, -1/+1Very badly-photoshopped pic. Check out the shadowy right edge of the mountain (below the cloud), ugh. But what I'd really like to see is a photo like this (a real one) taken with Meteor Crater in the foreground. Maybe there's one out there, just have to google for it... I grew up in Winslow, AZ and have seen the Crater a dozen times, but never at night...
    • freezejeans, on 04/21/2008, -0/+0Hey, I grew up there, too! Small world, eh?
  • majordanger, on 04/16/2008, -0/+2That is a beautiful time exposure. I'm guessing 10 seconds.
    Well I got my new desktop, THANKS Dan & Cindy and thanks APOD!
  • sgupt, on 04/17/2008, -1/+1You can't get even close to that much detail in 10 seconds LOL
  • tgap, on 04/17/2008, -0/+1I wish more places around the U.S. would protect the night sky. This is a beautiful scape ... I think I'll make my next vacation in Flagstaff!
  • elisadeng, on 04/17/2008, -0/+1the night will be amazing when there is only moon and stars,when I was young I can enjoy it every summer night,but now with the more and more pollution ,the sky become more and more dark. While,I enjoy the same scene in the Huangshan,it do be existed
  • AmbroseKali, on 04/22/2008, -0/+0I love Flagstaff. I've always loved it, and someday, I will return. It's nice to know that the starry skies will remain.

    I live in California, so I don't take that for granted.
  • serinfo, on 06/07/2008, -0/+0It is so beautiful. I want to go to see the scene. ^^
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