This is just an arbitrary scale of light pollution. Our ancestors didn’t see nebula clouds.
porteroffinland on
This is untrue. In the most excellent conditions you would see something like what this picture says the suburban sky to be like, and you’d see essentially no colors other than black and white
AcunaMataduh on
This is extremely misleading. They didn’t see the bright glow of the Milky Way. They saw in between 4 and 5, and you can still see it like that at dark sites
27Suyash on
You forgot to mention your ancestors had cameras for eyes
my108centsss on
Maybe, but they don’t have access to shitty AI brainrot and memes like we do, so take that /s
payne747 on
Title doesn’t match the content
ThreadCountHigh on
I grew up in a very dark area and thought seeing the Milky Way overhead in the summer was totally normal. But all those pictures from 1-3 and maybe 4 are only possible with long-exposure photography. Especially the colours.
ohboyImontheinternet on
If my ancesters’ eyesight was anything like mine, they wouldn’t see shit
funandgames12 on
Is 1-5 actually real ? Like you can actually see that ? Yeah we don’t even have that out in the country here where it’s all farms. That looks fake like AI made it lol. But living in the suburbs of a major city you don’t really see stars. Just the moon.
FleshPrinnce on
Im from a rural area and we didn’t see gigantic freaking nebulae on random clear nights lol
cheeseman_real on
yeah, no… i’ve been to the middle of nowhere, and i mean seriously the middle of nowhere, the sky was about 4-5. this is what you can see with a digital camera, sure, but not with the naked eye lmao
Sht_n_giglz on
This is misleading. That may he true if you identify as a camera. 1-4 are not visible to human eye, only to photographic equipment.
cam-douglas on
Possibly but they still new jack about our place in the cosmos without adequate telescopes (on earth or in space).
skyliners_a340 on
Before anyone move away from this image, [Ian Lauer Astro](https://youtu.be/sRuLSFmBIFs?si=Cv5Bjo2kQHlGNbg2) photographer made a video on this very specific image, with accurate photos and not composite image like you see above.
It’s worth the watch.
navinars on
Well, we got smartphones now. Suckers 😆
Scr33ble on
For one thing, they actually looked
flaminx0r on
Not correct.
And also, can see amazing skies today if you don’t live in the city – but it never looks like the most left-hand image.
TheBlueHedgehog302 on
This is not a representation of what you see with the naked eye, it’s what a camera can capture.
BrokilonDryad on
I grew up in a rural town. We didn’t see cloudy mystical Milky Way nebula shit, ever. It doesn’t look like this. A glimpse of the Milky Way in summer? Yeah, fell in love with it. Did it look like this? Fuck no.
Yeah, the sky and stars were far brighter. They were crisp, cold and beautiful. I remember a couple of times seeing the Milky Way as a kid in the summer and being amazed. Sometimes we’d be lucky enough to see northern lights in winter despite being so far south.
But the sky has never looked like this “guide”. That’s not how it works. It’s still dark despite the stars and moon. No nebulas are clear to the eye. This is an artist’s interpretation of the night sky.
heyjoewx on
Oh, light pollution.
I thought their view was different as it was referring to Earth’s axial precession which has caused a dramatic shift in the night sky compared to 300,000 years ago.
Earth’s rotational axis wobbles in a 25,772 year cycle, rotating the view of fixed stars by about 11 degrees westward.
BPal75 on
I never saw a nebula like this, but as a suburban kid growing up, I vividly remember the first time I was in a remote location, far from the nearest population center, and I saw a night sky lit up like 1 or 2 in this photo minus the nebula. The stars were breathtaking.
yggdrasilsroot on
Go on a isolated mountain top at night with no moon and with naked eye most you can see is what is at number 6. Maybe 5 if there’s a super clear sky and there’s really no light polution around
dfrcoms on
Everybody is saying the image here oversells it, but it actually undersells it too, because looking at a rural or desert night sky is absolutely beautiful and indescribable compared to this low-res jpeg lol. It definitely is the experience of feeling like you’re looking at 2-3 here.
It is not just ‘more white dots’, I promise. Go experience it!
> **Description:** This image illustrates the [Bortle scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale), which measures the impact of light pollution on the dark skies at a given location. It shows, from left to right, the decrease in the number of stars and night-sky objects visible in excellent dark sky conditions compared with cities. The illustration is a modification of an [original photograph](https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2146a/) taken at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, a place with excellent dark-sky conditions, perfect for astronomy. The image has been flipped left to right.
Yea they had longer exposure time with their eyes back then as well!
>!//j!<
Splat800 on
I’m an astrophotographer, this is complete horse 💩
Bortle 1 skies are more like 5 here. And obviously naked eye you won’t be seeing colour, it’ll mostly look black and white.
I’ve seen this karma farming image before and it annoys me every time, completely misleading.
hooka_pooka on
Sky so clear they probably saw God sitting right up there
strictnaturereserve on
I’ve been in places that have no light pollution and it does not look like that you can sort of see the Milky way but not like that.
Complete horseshit
MuscaMurum on
…unless they lived in Seattle
useriskhan on
I lived in an urban setup all my life and when I visited ancestral village to run some family errands, I saw the stars like proper starry sky for the first time and I was just amazed, couldn’t get my eyes of the sky. Its a wonderful experience.
Historical-Fun-2536 on
Fact, stars appeared brighter to our ancestors than they do now.
Doc-Renegade on
I never saw stars like I did in the mountains of Afghanistan..
ajulydeath on
Dark Sky sites do not look like that, that is absolutely the work of a long exposure
33 Comments
This is just an arbitrary scale of light pollution. Our ancestors didn’t see nebula clouds.
This is untrue. In the most excellent conditions you would see something like what this picture says the suburban sky to be like, and you’d see essentially no colors other than black and white
This is extremely misleading. They didn’t see the bright glow of the Milky Way. They saw in between 4 and 5, and you can still see it like that at dark sites
You forgot to mention your ancestors had cameras for eyes
Maybe, but they don’t have access to shitty AI brainrot and memes like we do, so take that /s
Title doesn’t match the content
I grew up in a very dark area and thought seeing the Milky Way overhead in the summer was totally normal. But all those pictures from 1-3 and maybe 4 are only possible with long-exposure photography. Especially the colours.
If my ancesters’ eyesight was anything like mine, they wouldn’t see shit
Is 1-5 actually real ? Like you can actually see that ? Yeah we don’t even have that out in the country here where it’s all farms. That looks fake like AI made it lol. But living in the suburbs of a major city you don’t really see stars. Just the moon.
Im from a rural area and we didn’t see gigantic freaking nebulae on random clear nights lol
yeah, no… i’ve been to the middle of nowhere, and i mean seriously the middle of nowhere, the sky was about 4-5. this is what you can see with a digital camera, sure, but not with the naked eye lmao
This is misleading. That may he true if you identify as a camera. 1-4 are not visible to human eye, only to photographic equipment.
Possibly but they still new jack about our place in the cosmos without adequate telescopes (on earth or in space).
Before anyone move away from this image, [Ian Lauer Astro](https://youtu.be/sRuLSFmBIFs?si=Cv5Bjo2kQHlGNbg2) photographer made a video on this very specific image, with accurate photos and not composite image like you see above.
It’s worth the watch.
Well, we got smartphones now. Suckers 😆
For one thing, they actually looked
Not correct.
And also, can see amazing skies today if you don’t live in the city – but it never looks like the most left-hand image.
This is not a representation of what you see with the naked eye, it’s what a camera can capture.
I grew up in a rural town. We didn’t see cloudy mystical Milky Way nebula shit, ever. It doesn’t look like this. A glimpse of the Milky Way in summer? Yeah, fell in love with it. Did it look like this? Fuck no.
Yeah, the sky and stars were far brighter. They were crisp, cold and beautiful. I remember a couple of times seeing the Milky Way as a kid in the summer and being amazed. Sometimes we’d be lucky enough to see northern lights in winter despite being so far south.
But the sky has never looked like this “guide”. That’s not how it works. It’s still dark despite the stars and moon. No nebulas are clear to the eye. This is an artist’s interpretation of the night sky.
Oh, light pollution.
I thought their view was different as it was referring to Earth’s axial precession which has caused a dramatic shift in the night sky compared to 300,000 years ago.
Earth’s rotational axis wobbles in a 25,772 year cycle, rotating the view of fixed stars by about 11 degrees westward.
I never saw a nebula like this, but as a suburban kid growing up, I vividly remember the first time I was in a remote location, far from the nearest population center, and I saw a night sky lit up like 1 or 2 in this photo minus the nebula. The stars were breathtaking.
Go on a isolated mountain top at night with no moon and with naked eye most you can see is what is at number 6. Maybe 5 if there’s a super clear sky and there’s really no light polution around
Everybody is saying the image here oversells it, but it actually undersells it too, because looking at a rural or desert night sky is absolutely beautiful and indescribable compared to this low-res jpeg lol. It definitely is the experience of feeling like you’re looking at 2-3 here.
It is not just ‘more white dots’, I promise. Go experience it!
[Here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/How_light_pollution_affects_the_dark_night_skies_%28dark-skies%29_%28flipped_left-right%29.jpg) is a much higher-quality (8,000 × 4,500 pixels, file size: 6.79 MB) version of this image.
> **Description:** This image illustrates the [Bortle scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale), which measures the impact of light pollution on the dark skies at a given location. It shows, from left to right, the decrease in the number of stars and night-sky objects visible in excellent dark sky conditions compared with cities. The illustration is a modification of an [original photograph](https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2146a/) taken at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, a place with excellent dark-sky conditions, perfect for astronomy. The image has been flipped left to right.
> **Date:** 29 June 2022, 08:52
> **Author:** ESO/P. Horálek, M. Wallner
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_light_pollution_affects_the_dark_night_skies_(dark-skies)_(flipped_left-right).jpg
Yea they had longer exposure time with their eyes back then as well!
>!//j!<
I’m an astrophotographer, this is complete horse 💩
Bortle 1 skies are more like 5 here. And obviously naked eye you won’t be seeing colour, it’ll mostly look black and white.
I’ve seen this karma farming image before and it annoys me every time, completely misleading.
Sky so clear they probably saw God sitting right up there
I’ve been in places that have no light pollution and it does not look like that you can sort of see the Milky way but not like that.
Complete horseshit
…unless they lived in Seattle
I lived in an urban setup all my life and when I visited ancestral village to run some family errands, I saw the stars like proper starry sky for the first time and I was just amazed, couldn’t get my eyes of the sky. Its a wonderful experience.
Fact, stars appeared brighter to our ancestors than they do now.
I never saw stars like I did in the mountains of Afghanistan..
Dark Sky sites do not look like that, that is absolutely the work of a long exposure
how do I know? I was just at one last week