[Aztlan] Artificial Lights and Viewing the Stars

[eschele at mail.utexas.edu]

Thanks Jules,

You have interesting insights into world views and perceptions of the night sky.
Along those same lines, here is a website called "The night sky in the World:
Satellite monitoring of the artificial night sky brightness and the stellar
visibility"  National Geographic also produced a great map that displays the
same information:

http://www.lightpollution.it/worldatlas/pages/fig1.htm

Elaine

Quoting Jules Siegel <jules at cafecancun.com>:

> eschele at mail.utexas.edu wrote:
> > In response to Edward's question and his statement that these stars are
> "hardly
> > visible", it should be remembered that observation of the stars was much
> easier
> > before "electric light pollution".
> You strike to the heart of the translator's dilemma of living in one
> culture while attempting to reproduce the thoughts of another. This is a
> very important point. I hope you will be patient with me while I belabor
> it. If in a hurry, click on
> http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast14aug_1.htm to feel directly
> what I can only hint at here. I'm not sure if sky shot you will see is
> enhanced and intensified, but even if it were, it hints at how the sky
> looks on certain nights in the northern hemisphere where the air is
> still clear. Do we go into the field mainly for knowledge, or mainly to
> see that? Anita Brown (my beauteous bride these thirty years) and I have
> spent our time off the power grid on the pretext of researching a book
> called "The Real Mexico," but the truth is we are beach bums who were
> partially domesticated by Cancun, our compromise with civilization and
> its discontents.
>
> Living in Cancun for the past 24 years, Anita and I have noticed the
> diminishing number of stars on view since we first arrived here in 1983.
> A few weeks ago, we visited a friend's mini-hotel south of Tulum, off
> the power grid right where the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve begins:
> http://www.vialaktea.info . The shock of seeing all those stars was
> truly awesome, one of the high points of our trip. We had a similar
> experience after Hurricane Gilbert, 1988, when all power was off for a
> few days. The first night after we returned home to Puerto Morelos the
> stars were so bright and the night sky so blue that we woke up. I wrote
> about that experience in "How did it go with Gilberto?"
> http://cafecancun.com/gilbert.shtml.
>
> Those of us who have spent any time off the power grid can testify that
> outside industrial civilization the night sky is an entirely different
> and far more intense experience. On clear moonless nights, the stars
> dominate everything, revealing the degree to which we have been
> desensitized by our life-support system. I would also argue that the
> ancients were considerably more sensitive than we are because they were
> not subject to the numbing effects of environmental pollution,
> especially carbon monoxide and other byproducts of incomplete
> combustion, as well as the decidedly depressing effects of modern
> child-rearing practices (which I discuss in my current work in progress,
> "The Human Robot, Understanding the Emotional Effects of Industrialism,"
> free download at http://www.lulu.com/content/109203.
>
> I think that it is difficult sometimes to appreciate the very great
> likelihood that life before industrialism was an entirely different
> emotional and sensory experience. By comparison, we live stunted lives.
> As Herman Kahn put it, we suffer from the educated inability to
> understand. Members of privileged, educated, elite classes tend toward
> condescension in order to feel good about our position in the food
> chain. As I have argued here and elsewhere, the presumption that
> pre-industrial peoples were intellectually unsophisticated -- noble
> savages, at best, superstitious brutes at worst -- is a prevailing
> symptom of cultural imperialism that attempts to rationalize the
> Conquest. Mel Gibson's "Apocalipto" (not even a Spanish word) is a prime
> example of this process in our time. In "1491," Charles C. Mann
> pointedly analyzes how the erroneous perception of native American
> peoples in what is now the United States and Canada as always having
> been food-gathers and hunters supports modern property rights. This
> cultural imperialism extends to the choice of language used for
> translation. I discuss that process in "The Origins of Gaming and
> Operations Research in the I Ching"
> <http://newsroom-l.net/newsroom/?p=204>, where I argue:
>
> "The idea of a popular song written about a power station seems
> ludicrous when the title is translated literally as “Great Stalin
> Hydroelectric Project Number 6.” A song about some railroad train --
> “Wabash Cannonball” or “The City of New Orleans” -- produces no such
> laughter. It is part of your tradition. You can hear the music. It fits
> perfectly."
>
> The association of the Perseid meteor shower with the hints at a
> possible root of the origin myths. To what extent were the ancients
> aware of the connection between meteors and meteorites? Did they know
> that "falling stars" really did fall on Earth? If they did, would they
> have theorized that humans (and/or life itself) fell to Earth regularly
> from the Pleiades sky zone?
>
> ---Begin forwarded text---
> http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast14aug_1.htm
>
> The Extraordinary Geomagnetic Perseid Meteor Shower
>
> /A geomagnetic storm triggered dazzling aurora during the peak of the
> 2000 Perseid meteor shower./
>
> August 14, 2000 -- An interplanetary shock wave from the Sun struck
> Earth's magnetosphere just before the peak of the Perseid meteor shower
> on August 12, 2000, triggering a powerful geomagnetic storm. Stargazers
> across Canada and the United States were treated to the rare spectacle
> of a meteor shower seen against the backdrop of colorful Northern Lights.
>
> Right: Daniel Hershman captured this dazzling picture on August 12,
> 2000, at Sunrise Point in Mt. Rainier National Park, WA. The three
> bright lights near the right side of the image are Jupiter, Saturn and
> the red star Aldebaran.
>
> --
> JULES SIEGEL Apdo. 1764, 77501-Cancun, Q. Roo, Mexico
> http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts
>
> Newsroom-l, news and issues for journalists
> http://www.newsroom-l.net/
>