Light pollution and an attempt to capture 200 Billion stars.

At the very least, there are 200 billion stars in our galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Unfortunately, its an extremely rare event for somebody born today to actually get a truly good view of them. Even 10km outside Winnipeg (not even a major city by some standards!), the sky looks black, but light pollution is clearly hindering some of the dimmer stars to be visible. Leave a camera shutter open for a few minutes to capture the available light, and the orange city glow overpowers the glow from the stars above.

Here’s a neat link/map regarding light pollution in North America. LINK. Notice how if you’re from any urban area on the east coast, you’ve got little hope of ever catching a truly dark sky, even hundreds of miles from home.

The faint cloud-like glow from the galactic center would have been that much more brilliant without it having to compete with the city glow.

Click the images for a larger view.

Is that the sun? – No, that’s Winnipeg.