Have You Seen the Milky Way?

Posted by Kelly Whitt Oct 1, 2007

I watched Timothy Ferris's show Seeing in the Dark on PBS in mid-September. The show is about amateur astronomers. It talks about people who build their own telescopes. astrophotographers, people making discoveries on their own, and so forth. It's a good show (watch it in High Def if possible!) and I would recommend it if you ever see it come up on your programming schedule.

One thing that Timothy said in the show was that only one in five people alive today have seen the Milky Way. I find that shocking ... and sad. It was not so long ago that the only light we had at night were fires or candlelight. And now there are some people who haven't even seen their place in the universe.

So I ask you: Have you seen the Milky Way? Take a trip out into the dark skies. You will need to travel away from big cities by about an hour or more. Then just look up. In the fall, seeing the Milky Way requires no direction. Just look up. Once your eyes are accustomed to the dark, it is the thick strip of light stretching overhead from one horizon to the other. Take a pair of binoculars and slowly sweep across it. Do any clusters or nebula float by?

People don't have an appreciation for things they haven't seen or don't understand. If you have seen the Milky Way, then share it with someone who hasn't.