Once you live in a city, it’s easy to forget that we are surrounded by the greatest show inside the Universe : The Universe itself. This sky comparison chart is the unhappy proof of that.

Sadly, missing the awe-inspiring show of all those planets, stars, and galaxies dancing around us is the cost humans had to pay for having observed it within the first place:

When our prehistoric ancestors studied the sky after sunset, they observed that one of the stars were not fixed with respect to the constant pattern of the constellations. Instead, five of them moved, slowly forward across the sky, then backward for a number of months, then forward again, as if they couldn’t quite make up their minds. We call them planets, the Greek word for ” wanderers.” These planets presented a profound mystery. The earliest explanation was that they were living beings. How else to provide an explanation for their strange looping behavior. Later they were considered gods, and then disembodied astrological influences. But the $64000 approach to this mystery is that the planets are worlds, that the Earth is one of them, and that they all go around the sun in step with precise mathematical laws. This discovery has led directly to our modern global civilization.

A Personal Voyage – Harmony of the arena, by Carl Sagan

Excellent dark sky

Inner city sky

Next time you’ve got a couple of free days, remember the photographs above and go to a remote place, away from any town, in a night without moon. When you have never done this, I will be able to assure you that the experience will deeply affect your perception of the sector. [Thanks B!]

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This post is tagged: astrological influences, global civilization, mathematical laws, prehistoric ancestors, stars and galaxies