What's the point - Bortle?

[Sunshine]

1 hour ago, Mircea said:

Bortle is the name of a person who tried to help a bit amateur astronomers. I respect that and I'm grateful to him for that.

Mircea

Yes yes, don’t mistake my attempt at tongue and cheek humor as an attack.

[Mircea]

Sunshine

Thank you for clarifying that, I hope I did not over reacted.

Regards, Mircea

[Mr Spock]

I'm just grateful people are writing 'Bortle' instead of 'bortle' or worse, 'bortal' 

Now we need to get people writing Plössl correctly... 

[Steve Ward]

29 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

I'm just grateful people are writing 'Bortle' instead of 'bortle' or worse, 'bortal' 

Now we need to get people writing Plössl correctly... 

And "Barlow" ... 😉

[Mr Spock]

10 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

And "Barlow"

Yes, always  And Dobson.

[Mircea]

And Albireo not Alberio ...

[Naughty Neal]

I don't like folks saying or spelling Beetlejuice esp from pro's who should know better.

[Elp]

But surely it's pronounced similar to how it's spelled, the other is another set of letters and intonation entirely. It's not like the mix up you get pronouncing UK towns. You don't pronounce bet or better as bee-t or bee-tter do you.

Edited February 29 by Elp

[Steve Ward]

30 minutes ago, Elp said:

But surely it's pronounced similar to how it's spelled, the other is another set of letters and intonation entirely. It's not like the mix up you get pronouncing UK towns. You don't pronounce bet or better as bee-t or bee-tter do you.

That'd be an "Americanism" pure and simple , I'm sure they mispronounce our language just for the hell of it ... 😄

Edited February 29 by Steve Ward

[Tiny Clanger]

11 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

That'd be an "Americanism" pure and simple , I'm sure they mispronounce our language just for the hell of it ... 😄

I'd love to know if the reason so many on CN spell Baader 'Badder' is that they just don't hear the long 'a' in their heads when they read the name.

[Elp]

17 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

That'd be an "Americanism" pure and simple , I'm sure they mispronounce our language just for the hell of it ... 😄

Envelope is one which annoys a lot, pronounced on-ve-lope. Where does the O come from?!?

[MalcolmP]

and  say soder when they are solderng their electrical bits 

[jjohnson3803]

17 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

That'd be an "Americanism" pure and simple , I'm sure they mispronounce our language just for the hell of it ... 😄

Heck yes.  Now go take your VITE-ah-mins.  😉

[MalcolmP]

Beetlejuice is easy to remember, and being being a combo of two other common words less of a dyslexical nightmare, To speel the real word needs looking up, copy, paste. plava to avoid an error and chastisement by pedants ! Whereas Beetlejuice is an obvious attempt at humour as is this post ! Anyhows I am neither an Arab nor an ancient Latin so I dont bother with correct possessives and genders neiver.
 

[Elp]

The first time I heard someone pronounce it I thought, well I can't say what I thought here.

[Tiny Clanger]

On 28/02/2024 at 11:13, Steve Ward said:

And "Barlow" ... 😉

And 'Hoover', 'Biro', 'Sandwich', 'Wellington',  'Shrapnel', 'Algorithm', Diesel' and of course 'Cardigan' 🙄

Edited February 29 by Tiny Clanger
adding 'Diesel' to the flames

[DaveS]

5 minutes ago, MalcolmP said:

and  say soder when they are solderng their electrical bits 

That's what I say when a drop falls of the iron and onto my hand lol

[MalcolmP]

I'm surprised that I didnt get a 'removed word' for my effort   !

[MalcolmP]

John Bortle was writing his visual description for S&T (Feb2001)
It has little point in the moisture laden atmosphere of the UK.
 

Edited March 1 by MalcolmP

[DaveS]

Saying that Bortle 5 is "suburban sky" is just plain daft. I can tell you that I lived in suburban London in Ruislip and would have cheerfully murdered for Bortle 5 skies! In the end I moved house and got mid Bortle 3

Also, saying that the centre of the Milky Way casts shadows in Bortle 1 is equally daft, since the centre of the Milky Way barely makes it out of the horizon murk even from the South Coast here.

[jjohnson3803]

I don't think Bortle meant his scale to be the end-all-be-all, but rather a relative scale for quick approximations.  IIRC, he wrote that himself on Cloudy Nights or somewhere.  Or more simply, 8 is substantially worse than 4, etc.

More objectively, there's MPAS, SQM, and probably other alphabet soup to use.