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by nine_k 1209 days ago
The sky is bright against the landscape if you're far enough away from civilization. In an urban environment, the night sky is black with some stars at best, blue or pink at worst, and spots of artificial light overpower it here and there.

Even really far away, in complete darkness, with the sky literally covered by a million stars, the sky mostly remains pitch black to the naked eye, with very faint bits of color from planets like Mars, some stars, and some nebulae. It's as black as the line of the forest that obscures it, which you only vcan see by the way it covers the stars.

Unfortunately, all these beautiful colors from the article are mostly invisible to a naked human eye. Long-exposure shots are the best chance to register these colors, telescopes help, but only for a tiny bit if the sky.

1 comments

See Orion's belt? Pretend that's a straight line. Now look perpendicular to it in both directions and you come to some fairly bright stars about the same distance both ways. One of those is red/orange and the other is blue/green. Visible to the naked eye even in an urban setting.
Yes, can confirm, Betelgeuse is reddish, and Rigel is bluish, I see it nearly every night when Orion is high enough above horizon right in NYC. Mars was prominent a few weeks ago, also pretty orange. But their colors are not bright hues, not like LEDs; rather, they have some hint of color to me.

And, of course, they are but small dots, and the sky is vast and (in an urban setting) rather empty; there are few sufficiently bright stars, and of course nothing comparable to the colorful glow of space dust, nebulae, or even a noticeable atmosphere glow, except for backlight of the city.

Orion’s Belt isn’t visible in many urban settings
The belt is hard to see, but Betelgeuse is pretty prominent.

Venus, Jupiter, and even Mars become visible in twilight, when the sky is still comparatively bright (has intense color).

Yes, it's not visible indoors.