Earth Observatory showing light pollution of UK/IE - nice (large) picture..

[cathalferris]

The NASA Earth Observatory website's picture of the day for Thursday July 26th, is of the UK at night.

It's a great picture and shows all of the light pollution visible to space-borne sensors.

http://eoimages.gsfc...2012087_lrg.jpg

It's a big picture, so I've saved and attached it instead of linking directly to the pic.

Towns and villages of ~1000 people are visible on the picture, as well as oil rigs and fishing vessels.

The pic is from March of this year, probably the last decently clear night....

[Naemeth]

All of that wasted light....

[LukeSkywatcher]

I live about 20Km south of Dublin city and my LP is not as bad as that image shows.

[cantab]

Those rigs are really bright! I guess that must be from flaring gas off.

Also incredible how visible snow is.

[Darkstar_1]

A disgusting waste of resource, no wonder we're killing our planet. :mad:

[Bizibilder]

Just look at what the Dutch and Belgian astronomers have to put up with!!

[Moonshane]

I am surprised how bad south Wales is. I live near Manchester, not far off as bad as it gets. thankfully I have access to some very good skies within an hour's drive or so, not that the weather encourages me to do so very often.

[Bluemaris]

I'm glad Mid-Wales looks dark, otherwise it looks like I should be setting up my scope in the Irish Sea. All I've got to do is find a mount that floats.

[alexog]

I wonder if it's an IR image. Good resolution, I can see lots of local detail.

[JB80]

Just look at what the Dutch and Belgian astronomers have to put up with!!

It's unbelievable to think that the Belgians are actually proud of it. I guess it's not fair to speak for all of them but it is a source of national pride.

Anyway, I am here where the red arrow is.

P.S, can we get a facepalm smiley?

[Si W]

Shameful, what a waste of energy :mad: :mad:

[c3po]

agreed, what a terrible waste of energy and i continue to urge all UK citizens to fill in the petition on the 10 Downing Street website (lost the link for now!).... on the plus side, at last now we can get a reasonably good idea of where to move to get guaranteed dark skies based on REAL photographic data rather than the population based models offered by Avex and Needless.org

[Mr Flibble]

I am surprised how bad south Wales is. I live near Manchester, not far off as bad as it gets. thankfully I have access to some very good skies within an hour's drive or so, not that the weather encourages me to do so very often.

Yup its pretty bad. Luckily though its a relatively short drive to get out of the valleys and into some very dark skies. My favourite dark site spot is about 1.25 hour drive from cardiff and its superb around the new moon. Northern England looks pretty dark as well, much more so than I thought. And Scotland as always looks amazing.

[Cath]

I agree, it is definitely a terrible waste of precious energy :( .. we'll regret it one day.

It's madness if you think about, with the looming energy crisis. Not really the actions of a so called intelligent species.

[cathalferris]

The linked picture is much larger. It appears that the new forum software does a bit of resizing.

The pic is visible-light wavelengths. Don't forget that streetlights will still show up well under a cloud cover, the same way that you would read a page under greaseproof paper when it's directly over the page.

It's horrifying the amount of electricity that this pic shows, and it's worse that there are people that are proud of it too.