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by frobware 3573 days ago
I'm blind (at night). I would dearly love to the stars. In fact, this is pretty close to my #1 on my bucket list.
4 comments

I'm humbled. There are those of us who can see well, and don't ever look up (though even if we do, the sky is already lit up with the city lights).

I wish for you that your wish be granted.

Beautifully put. Watching stars is underrated.

The historical significance of looking up and seeing light patterns slowly move across the dark sky is enormous: it was where the first human civilizations made their first discoveries.

The night sky is the origin of mankind's first concepts of time, cosmology and theology (Egyptians associated the afterlife with the night sky). The very earliest known long-form writings such as the Pyramid Texts [1] are fundamentally rooted in astronomical observations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts

I remember a mostly deaf person I knew for a while. It was pretty amazing-- she could mostly understand what I said through reading my lips and what little hearing she had. She could also speak pretty well.

She told me that she could feel the beat of music -- literally the vibrations. When I asked her about bird songs, she said she had never heard them. I was momentarily dumbstruck. Day-to-day, I take bird songs for granted, but when I stop and think about it, they are some of the most beautiful, mysterious, transcendent things I've ever heard. And she'll never know...

Makes you wonder what other sensory experiences we humans are missing out on.

Do you have RP or something similar?

What else is on your bucket list? Apologies if the questions are too personal, I find what we miss when we lose sight very interesting.

Hope you get to see them again.

Yes, it is RP. I have no recollection of ever seeing in the dark.
That is a bummer. I also have RP but I'm only down to about 10% of night vision (i remember being able to see much better at night). How's your day vision?

Much luck (and peace) to you.

Can you see them on a bright TV? Maybe some night vision apparatus will do the trick or the next generation of cameras + an oculus. Or maybe even hololens nightvision.
Perhaps with a telescope pointed at some particularly bright stars? If that's enough light to register.