Unsung Glory of the Night Skies

Updated: Feb 12, 2022

It has been reported far often by experienced amateur astronomers across the world that uncounted places on the globe are so dark that the Milky Way band looks like a solid object hung onto the fabric of the sky, and it spans from horizon to horizon. It would feel that you can almost touch the overhanging Milky Way’s arching band amidst a super dense, starry, firmament. Stars are in so innumerable pin-pricks that their density will appear like grains of sand glued onto the canvas or wallpaper of the sky. The mind feels dizzying, emotional and overwhelming seeing that many dotted stars sparkling like jewel dust.

In fact, such places are so dark that the pitch-black darkness on ground actually gets eliminated by the starlight from above. It means that on new-Moon nights you can, indeed, see the ground feebly after being illuminated by the cumulative light cast from the stars and the Milky Way band above!

Celestial objects like tails of fainter comets, structure in diffuse nebulae, condensed planetary nebulae, faint arms of galaxies, and more, seen even with a small telescope attested to the eye are rendered monochrome, nearly photographic. Only a small binocular suffices to cast the sprinkling of stars in a cluster and star-rich fields splendorous, and in numbers beyond one’s ability to even estimate. Bring in a bigger telescope or large binocular, the expression of what is witnessed gets, in the true sense of the word, ecstatic and speechless; celestial bodies are visible in indescribable glory – to claim the least.

Countless stars in the sky in such a location will serve to be the penultimate experience an aspiring astronomy enthusiast or even newcomer could ever expect. Such a location is like an astronomer’s fairy-tale legend come true. Now this is our definition of a 'dream' destination. And this is our platform of solitude that we yearn for.

Such places are where ancient, obscure, light from tens of millions of light-years gets finally revealed to the human eyes and sensory organs. In other words, in this – only our – astronomical experience, Mother Nature reveals Her true Cosmic attributes to us in our petty awake consciousness and scale of reality down here.

Your host-astronomer is not a mere narrator of the above lines, he has had the fortune of actually witnessing close to such surreal sights, in-person, not less than one hundred times! He now wants to present to you the same – a celestial gift in your earthly life.

This is Astronomy Journeys, your astronomy guide and travel host.

Unsung Glory of the Night Skies

Let's Connect