[billforsternz]

I live in a smallish city (200K to 500K population, depending on how you define the city bounds). I just stepped out (it's 11pm here) and looked up (it's not normally something I think about). It's pretty reasonable, you can definite see stars by the thousands, some of them very bright. The air here is very clear for city air. Out in the country it's definitely better though. The excursion I linked to was in a very isolated area, the Mackenzie Basin in Canterbury. The local authorities there have picked up this particular ball and are running with it. Recognising that they don't have much light pollution anyway, they have set about minimising what light pollution there is (eg street lighting points down, in general they try to avoid unnecessarily leaking light up). It does make for a genuinely impressive sky on a clear night. The excursion was great. The bus takes you to a very isolated spot, and they give you plenty of dark time to get your night vision working well. Recommended. The youngsters who were acting as tour guides were both from the Northern Hemisphere and they made a point of talking up the Southern sky, saying in general it is more interesting. I don't know much about astronomy and can't judge, but they made a good case. I had no idea that Alpha Centauri is only visible in this hemisphere for example. Maybe astronomy would be a good hobby. It "feels" more profound than chess, C++ programming, and the intersection of the two :- )