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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to be too much of a killjoy, but I never understood what was all that fuss about stars.

Maybe that's because I've had the reverse experience: I grew up in a place seeing a large amount of stars, where seeing the Milky Way was just expected, and then I moved to larger cities where you can barely see the brightest stars.

Well, even though it sure is nice to see the stars when I happen to be in a darker place, I never really missed them at any point. They're a nice feature of the environment, but not something really critical, just like the bird chirps. They're nice to hear on the morning, but you barely notice when they aren't there. When I'm in a city I'm more concerned about the wasted energy revealed by light pollution, and the annoying sound of roaring cars at most hours.

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I had a nearly identical "so what" thought when I went to college. I had just settled into my dorm when one of my roommates called us over to ogle some freshmen girls in short shorts somewhere walking by. They were preoccupied about it, but I had grown up in Florida near the gulf. I was honestly surprised by their interest: I had never met these young ladies and thus they were just unremarkable background people. But these guys acted like they had found an oasis in a desert. Sure they were pretty, but most girls were, right? I was informed that my opinion was incorrect and confusingly out of touch with reality.

In contrast, I once went to the Hayden planetarium and saw the galaxy for the first time. If I'm honest, I may be willing to admit I teared up more than a little. The experience utterly awestruck me, and that was merely a simulation. Bad eyesight combined with poor night vision and light pollution means I had never seen the Milky Way.

Hell, the first time I got glasses in second grade was the first time I could make out leaves on a tree! Up to that point, they were just this thing I knew was there, but I had never seen one rustling in the wind. Just some shape blobbing about. To this day, I can be content to just sit outside and watch trees sway in the wind for an hour. It honestly is just the most peaceful thing to see such detail moving all at once. A lot of people just don't understand it, as trees are about as ordinary as you can get; but to me, I remember how they used to look (and can just remove my glasses). They're rich in beauty.

TL;DR: If you lived without it, you'd be amazed how much you'll appreciate it.

I recently shifted to contact lenses. The one thing I really miss is going out to a park, taking off my glasses, and seeing what my brain finds in the images my very nearsighted eyes give me when I watch the trees sway in the wind.

I was informed that my opinion was incorrect and confusingly out of touch with reality.

Little did they know that what really turns some of those young women on are not so much guys with muscles and tans, as... guys who are into planetariums, the Hubble sequence, tinkering with Maxwell's equations and such; and able to explain it all, while camping in the desert on a moonless night.

dream on, dreamweapon ;)

:) Well I kind of lost interest in astronomy after early puberty. And when I wrote that I meant it more allegorically.

But give or take a few particulars about subject matter (and location), let's just say it's not that far off from actual experience. Which ended up being way better than anything I could have dreamt back during that time when I was being continually joshed and hassled (sometimes far from innocently) for my interests, in ways similar to what was described in the comment above mine.

That's fantastic and in some ways awful - why did it take so long to get you glasses? And I shall listen to a tree in the wind on tonight's dog walk just to remember

Cheers

That's a good question, and the answer is pretty benign: I didn't know I had bad eyesight.

See, to me, it was perfectly normal to need to sit at the front of the class or to have to hunch over the paper I was learning cursive on; I remember being a bit frustrated that I couldn't understand the lessons if I wasn't close, but I was still young enough that it didn't occur to me my eyes were defective. Squinting was just how you made things clearer after all. At that age I sorta just accepted the world for the way it was. So in second grade, my teacher told my parents I may need glasses, and a while after I got some and learned just how near-sighted I was. (I'm currently about a -7 diopter.)

I've come across a few other people who had a similar experience. From what I've gathered, it seems that first and second grade teachers become attuned to kids that need glasses. As for why I didn't know earlier, I think it's just that I was a fairly introverted kid, so I didn't do a lot of sports or group play. And the only real detail oriented stuff I did was reading, and I could almost literally bury my face in that. It looked like intent reading (and it likely was), but I suspect that was just a matter of holding the book close enough. It's easy to overlook the clues, but straightforward if you're specifically trying to notice 'em.

Rather a shame your comment is greying out. It's not offensive, just an unpopular opinion.

For some people it's an intrinsically beautiful sight. Others, a reminder of their place in spiritual creation. To me, it's incredible that we can see such a gigantic, distant structure so clearly, in a way which gives us a tangible sense of our location in the galaxy.

The night sky is a springboard for thought: what if we lived nearer the galactic center? The sky would be bright all the time, bright as day. Likely we'd never have figured out that we live in a solar system in a galaxy; without sight of the stars and a diurnal cycle, science wouldn't have developed along the same lines. Maybe without astronomy, we'd never have ventured into the oceans. Conceivably, technological civilization would be beyond our reach. We are lucky indeed in our birthplace, for more reasons than its climate and atmosphere.

I hope that gives you some idea what the 'fuss' is about, even if it's just my perspective.

If you haven't, please read Asimov's short story "Nightfall". Your comment was made for it.

http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.h...

You are right. The story touches in a thought-provoking way on several of the points raised by the parent comment.

I was not aware so I just did - thanks. Very much enjoyed that.

It is not about being able to "watch the stars"... it is more about experiencing and realising for a moment how tiny you are while beholding the cosmos. It is about putting things (even your whole life) into perspective...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

I know that, right.

But I have firsthand experience of the facts that:

- being able to watch the stars won't automatically make people put things into perspective

- watching the stars, while a good way to put things into perspective, isn't the only one

Stars are not a fundamental element of human life experience, just a nice but dispensable thing. Even your Youtube link doesn't show anything a human can see, and just showing a random picture of a starfield wouldn't really have much effect on most people.

Seeing plain stars only works if the people who watch them already have knowledge about them, basic understanding of the involved distances, etc. It is this knowledge that help you put things into perspective, not seeing the stars themselves.

I think the difference may be it isn't the effect on 'other people' it is the effect on 'you'.

I find it is a lot like art in that way, some pieces really move people and other people can see the same piece and say 'meh'. The trick is to understand that while the art doesn't do anything for you, it really is doing something for them.

Having raised kids and watched their interaction the "interesting" bit is that person A who is unmoved by exhibit E, imputes that person B is "making it up" when they express emotion about exhibit E. It isn't "made up" or imagined of course, but it takes a while for kids to realize that everyone's perception of the world around them is different, sometimes wildly so. Often that learning comes when they personally experience seeing meaning in something that someone else doesn't.

Once you understand that everyone sees things a bit differently you can appreciate their sense of wonder even if you don't share it.

I can't really agree on this point ... Seeing plain stars only works if the people who watch them already have knowledge about them, basic understanding of the involved distances, etc. It is this knowledge that help you put things into perspective, not seeing the stars themselves. There is ample evidence in early written accounts and from the writing of young people that without any knowledge at all about what stars "really are" they can be moved by seeing them.

>Stars are not a fundamental element of human life experience, just a nice but dispensable thing

I'd have to disagree. If the sky were a black blank slate except for the Sun (and possibly the moon to make life necessary) a great deal of our technical innovation would be significantly different. Seeing and looking at the movement of stars has had a significant impact on mathematics in the world, and the understanding of our own planet. Seeing the stars themselves (and their chemical composition) tells us a very large deal about the universe we live in.

> Stars are not a fundamental element of human life experience

Well, I disagree... You're body is composed of matter that originated in the core of "a star", so you wouldn't be able to "experience" your life without this small detail.

Another great quote by Carl Sagan is: "We are made of star stuff". And he's damn right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bm479V8qPs

I rarely get that experience of being tiny -- just as the balancing look at the fundamental particles rarely gives me the experience of being gigantic. When I look, I see a great hand reaching into the stars, humanity's hand, humanity's future destiny. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to be there too.

But hey, like, that's just my opinion, man. De gustibus non est disputandum.

I grew up in a rural area, and still live in what most would consider a rural area. So I grew up with being able to look up at the stars at night. I don't look at the stars often. But I can not imagine living somewhere that I can't because of the light pollution. But I very much prefer the sound of crickets, and owls at night to the dull roar of cars, sirens, horns, etc.

It's as major an issue as not being able to see the blue sky because of the air pollution. Sure, the light won't give you cancer, but it's still pollution that should be avoided.

> the light won't give you cancer

There are studies that suggest that city lights increase people's risk of cancer. Sleep studies have shown that exposure to blue light suppresses melatonin [1]. Studies with lab mice have shown that melatonin suppresses tumor growth. I don't know how solid the science is on this, so take it with a grain of salt.

[1] This is the reason many people use f.lux (https://justgetflux.com/).

I grew up in the White Mountains mentioned in the post you are responding to. I am still bowled over by the stars, by the moon, any nature, really. I suggest the difference is merely that we are different people, not that where we were born formed our appreciation.

So astronomy isn't your thing, that's cool. Perhaps you'd be more moved by considering just how much energy and money are wasted to create that light pollution? That's another important part of the issue.

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