Dark Skies..
Posted on: January 31, 2013
I spent a night up on the Karoo earlier this month. The South African observatory is based there, near the town of Sutherland and it now hosts the worlds largest radio telescope. You can see its been sighted there at nightfall when the sun disappears There is no light ‘leaking’ from industry, business or even houses as hardly anyone lives out there. The night sky was breathtaking! I’ve never seen so many stars and the brightness of those stars was awesome.
My physics-teacher colleagues will be able to explain this much better than I could, so I’m just going to link to the UK Dark Skies project page which explains what ‘dark Skies’ actually means in this context.
I’m just waiting for the next time I’m up that way again. Those southern hemisphere star formations were something I could have gazed up at in the clear African night sky for hours…
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