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Seeing the Milky Way
Can you see the Milky Way at night where you live?
I haven't seen it in the Detroit metropolitan area where I live since the mid-1980s. I am in Swat Pakistan now and still can't see it from here, which surprises me. I didn't think light pollution would be that bad. The sky looks about the same. I could see oodles more stars when I was a child. I am wondering how much diminishing eyesight may be contributing to this experience too.
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btw. The shape of the Milky Way is warped, it's not symmetric in any direction, according to latest astronomical measurements.
Picture of the Milky Way
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The cornea tends to darken and yellow with age (like the rest of one's skin) and the pupil can no longer open to a youthful 7 mm diameter, so the light losses can be on the order of 30-50% in very old eyes. This is approximately equal to one magnitude in stellar intensities, so your night sky viewing would be reduced from being able to see 6.5 or 7th magnitude stars to being able to see 5.5 to 6th magnitude stars.
The problem with not being able to see the Milky Way is 99% from light pollution.
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Forgot to answer the question.
No, I can't. The light pollution is too high to see more than the brightest stars in the sky. We got new streetlights that have a stronger downward directional beam, but they emit still too much diffused light nearby.
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I live in the city now so no I can't
A friend of mine has a house on an island in a rural area. We went there last November, late evening, when it was already really dark. He has a boat in the nearest village, and then it's only about 20 min by boat off the coast. When we were almost there the waves were too big and we couldn't see anything. We were about too lose control over the boat so we had to turn around. It was a bit scary. But the milky way was above us.
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Aren't we inside of the milky way? Thus, we always see it by looking at nearby stars?
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I can see a bit of it sometimes.
When I lived way up north, there was no light pollution for about 200kms in any direction.
You could see the most crystal clear skies. It was very beautiful. I used to take starmaps, phone app, or something like that, and lay on the Quad and look up at the night sky for hours.