In a message dated 11/12/05 2:12:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, george.olshevsky@gmail.com writes: << I was in the MIT Aerospace Library (where else!?) at day's end after classes reading up on the week's space news when the lights flicked for a few seconds and then went out. The sun had long since set and it was quite dark outside--it might even have been raining or sleeting. >> I remember that night very well. It was a perfectly clear night. I was living in the Throggs Neck section of The Bronx and when I realized the power was off, I ran outside thinking that I might finally see a beautiful star-studded night sky in what normally was a heavily light-polluted environment. Unfortunately, it was not to be, since the sky was flooded with light thanks to the Moon -- one day past full -- rising in the east! It was like a 1200-watt floodlight in the sky, washing out all but the brightest stars. :( In the days after the blackout, the various news media commented "how lucky" we were to have the blackout coincide with bright moon. I, of course, was one of the very few who was not happy with the circumstances. Interestingly, on July 13, 1977, another blackout occurred . . . this one confined chiefly to the New York Metro Area. I was still in The Bronx, and I was very pleased to see the Milky Way and a sky with a limiting magnitude to +5.4. On that occasion, there was a slender crescent Moon rising in the east at dawn, so the sky remained dark all through the night. In the hours just before twilight began I remember seeing a number of faint meteors and quite a few fourth and fifth magnitude satellites, moving slowly against the star background. In the nearly 20 years that I lived in The Bronx, that was the only night that I ever saw the Milky Way from my front yard! -- joe rao ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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