On Thursday, June 13, 2013 3:24:46 PM UTC-4, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:29:33 -0500, Ignoramus30848

wrote:



On 2013-06-13, wrote:

On Jun 12, 11:32?pm, Ignoramus21475 ignoramus21...@NOSPAM.

21475.invalid wrote:





Dan, fascinating story, I might give them a holler.



i



Bainbridge Island is not a great place for an observatory. Too many

cloudy days. But a lot of talented people there. They also built a

planetarium that is useable regardlesls of the weather.



I read somewhere, that due to light and air pollution, it is harder

and harder to find good places for observatories.



That's been true since the 1950s, Ig. I used to live an hour away

(35mi as the crow flies) from Palomar Mountain and, over the years,

there were lots of gripes from the crews (and people who knew them) up

at the telescope. As Escondido and Pauma Valley grew, light pollution

became more noticeable.



Since the 1970s, cities have attempted to mitigate their upward

shining lights with redesigned street lights, but paranoid citizens

just blast unrestrained light (in 500W chunks) all over their yards.

They think it keeps their home safe. Instead, it allows the criminals

to see everything. Morons. I'm glad I'm not bothered by light at

night because far too many of my neighbors over the years have left

porch or yard lights on at night, usually large and expensive-to-run

floods.



A whole lot of industrial lighting (such as that found at refineries)

has been redesigned since about then, too, but big cities (bright

lights in Vegas, NYC, Tokyo, etc.) just blow the skies away with their

brightness.



The Hubble/Spitzer/Kebler and other space telescopes really made

headway against the vagaries of atmosphere and reflected light.



I'm still ****ed every time I see thousands of watts of unrestrained

light blasting out at night, imagining how frustrating that must be to

real astronomers.



--

I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you

have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.

--Thomas Sowell

I saw one of those "How the hell do they do this Monster construction" shows a while back. They were installing a new sign in Times Square, NY. The project included installing an additional 4,000 Amp service, just for the signs on this building. I can't imagine a bigger waste. Really sick.