I grew up in a rural place where we could see the texture of the milky way just stepping outside at night—it’s been fun taking friends who grew up in cities on wilderness backpacking trips and sitting out to watch the stars. There’s an awe to a true night sky that I think has real psychological impact.

I did also have a cool experience, deep in the backcountry at a high elevation camp some years ago: we went to sleep in a gale, the tent flapping all around, with a cloudy sky. I thought we’d get a big storm, but I woke up hot at 3am, the air totally still. I slid out of the tent and the sky was completely crystal clear. An incredible spread of stars. I watched for a while and noticed a reddish glow on the horizon. We were so far out and it wrapped around in all directions, so I knew it couldn’t possibly have been a town, but I was puzzled. I learned about airglow when we got out of the woods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow

> There’s an awe to a true night sky that I think has real psychological impact.

I've only really experienced this once in my life. I was young teen, my family was visiting some family friends at a remote cabin. I woke up during the middle of the night and went out. It was a crystal clear winter night, and I was completely blown away at what I saw.

Once I had gotten over the shock, I thought "no wonder they called it the milky way". It was so bright, it felt like a new moon just smeared all across the sky.

Sadly not had the chance to experience that again. The then-remote cabin got swarmed by hundreds of others and so it's no longer pitch dark at night there.

I have it as a goal to get out in a really dark zone and see it again.

Outside of a few places like the Himalayas or Australia isn't not possible to see the darkness everyone lived in until street lighting.

This is the most accurate map and it still under reports light pollution under 21.5sqm https://www.darkskysites.com/

Worse satellite constilations may make it impossible to have a dark sky anywhere: https://arxiv.org/html/2604.09427v1

Led lights have caused such a massive increase in light pollution, let alone the effects on humans due to the blue spike, that they should be banned outright.

I love watching the milky way on a clear, dark night. There are so many stars. Countless stars. It makes me feel really small and all my troubles (and the world's troubles) so insignificant. I love that feeling.

idk if it’s just my eyes getting old, or my LASIK, or the sky just not being dark anywhere anymore, but these trips don’t look the same to me as they used to. today it all just seems kinda static-y and fuzzy, but i remember my first night in the grand canyon being an absolutely amazing experience.

> There’s an awe to a true night sky that I think has real psychological impact.

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

For almost all of human history we lived with that true night sky.

I wonder if the psychological impact is really the absence of the true night sky that we have. Maybe the awe we feel at seeing the true night is what we’re supposed to feel? Something to think about.