Dark Night Skies

Having grown up in a small town in the 1990s, I was fortunate to experience pretty dark skies at night. The combination of a clear night sky and a few books on amateur astronomy from our school's library fuelled my desire to understand the universe and our place in it.

I made photocopies of two star charts (one for each hemisphere) from a book I found in our school library and began using the northern hemisphere chart to study the night sky. The winter sky was, and still, is my favourite. Spotting the easily recognisable Orion constellation and knowing that its second-brightest star, with its distinctly reddish hue, is a red supergiant that could explode at any moment was quite fascinating.

The 1990s were also a great time to grow up as an astronomy enthusiast. Two bright comets graced our skies in 1996 and 1997. First, Comet Hyakutake appeared in March 1996, followed by Comet Hale-Bopp, which became spectacularly bright in April 1997.

Now, 23 years later, as an adult living in a severely light-polluted city, the recent Geminids meteor shower was rather disappointing. After midnight, my wife and I stepped outside to watch it. Under a truly dark sky, we could have seen two to four meteors streaking across the sky every minute. But instead, the entire sky glowed orange, and we managed to spot only one or two meteors every five to ten minutes.

I think it's very unfortunate that children growing up in cities today don't have the opportunity to experience the beauty of the night sky the way I did during my childhood. A clear, dark night sky can be a powerful source of inspiration and wonder for young minds.