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The night in Flagstaff when I finally saw the Andromeda galaxy with my own eyes
Back in 2019 I drove out to Flagstaff with a pair of cheap 10x50 binoculars and a star chart I printed at the library, mostly because my dad kept telling me how he used to see the Milky Way from his backyard in the 70s. That first night was a dud, clouds rolled in by 9, but the next evening the sky went so dark I could spot the Andromeda galaxy as a fuzzy smudge near Mirach, something I honestly thought was a lie in every photo I had ever seen. I sat on the hood of my car for two hours just going back and forth between the binoculars and a picture on my phone, thinking about how much harder it must have been to capture shots before digital sensors came along. For folks who shoot astro, does a light pollution map actually match what you see on the ground, or do you just trust your eyes once you're out there?
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sagea8815d ago
I read somewhere that light pollution maps can be off by a whole zone since they're built from old satellite data, so the ground truth can surprise you. Flagstaff is a dark sky city so it's probably closer to the map than most places, but stuff like a new gas station or a wet night can throw it off. Trust your eyes once you're out there, the map just tells you where to point the car.
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