We had national forest on three sides of the house, and no nearby cities. The night sky from our yard was amazing. We can't get that now living in a city.

And in the city, even.

Congratulations on your obviously great technique and equipment, not to mention your intelligence!

I'm just almost heading for bed, but I'm so glad I stopped in here first.

short enough to not need a guided mount. And I’ve seen a lot of amateur astrophotography.

and traffic.

I went there once.

Stars and constellations I could not see from home, were suddenly visible to the naked eye. No binoculars, telephoto lenses, or telescopes needed.

Your photo reminds me of what I saw in the sky in that remote location.

Well done.

of the way from the left, and about halfway down, the stars appear less dense, and it almost looks like a cat's face.

Your image reminds me of some I have seen from the Dark Skies communities.

The image is a long exposure using a lens I've only had for a short time. This was the first night I've tried the new lens for astrophotography, and I'm very pleased with the results.

as he peered into the monolith....

“The thing's hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!”

cottage.

I've memorized a list of the 35 brightest stars. I look at the night sky 3 or 4 times a night when it's not too cloudy and identify what stars and planets I can. I enjoy the progression of the sky -- about an hour of progress every 2 weeks (so for example the sky at 10pm one night looks like the sky at 11pm 2 weeks ago).

I just saw Procyon for the first time in 8 months or so when I got up this morning.

In the pre-dawn sky I love how Jupiter is between Aldebaran and Elnath (one of Taurus the bull's horns) , and Mars in between Alhena (Gemini's brighter foot) and Elnath.

My main guide is --

https://in-the-sky.org/skymap2.php

UNcheck the box "Deep Sky" below the sky map as that clutters things up with stuff most people can't see without binoculars at least.

For an alternate "planetarium view": . Pull down "Charts" from the top black menu bar, and pick Planetarium. Or go to this link:

https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php

Then scroll out some to zoom out until the horizon appears, then zoom out some more. Then hold the mouse button down while rotating things to where "E" is at the bottom center.

Click on the "Deep Sky" checkbox below the map on the left to uncheck it and get rid of all the clutter.

Edited to add There's a pulldown to change what stars one sees as far as brightness: bright, intermediate, and faint. My setting is bright as I can't see anything but the bright stars, and not all of them. The other thing is this setting is hard to find -- one finds it by first clicking the Change Time box to the right of the chart.

My photo includes that which can't be seen with the unaided eye. The point, in this case, is to reveal what you call clutter. Judging from the responses and recs, it seems that the photo touched people's sense of awe.

The main point of my post was that, in my experience anyway, it's possible to enjoy the night sky even in horrible light pollution conditions like I suffer from.

The thing about the "clutter" that I recommend turning off by unchecking the Deep Sky box -- they use sometimes bright colors and oversized squares and circles to show the locations of the various nebula that are very distracting and confusing and less than helpful in most cases unless one has the equipment or good fortune (in a low light pollution setting) to see some of them.

I apologize for my misreading of your comment concerning "clutter".

You make a very good case for enjoying the night sky despite the poor viewing conditions found in most cities. Like you, on any given night when it's not overcast, I usually go outdoors to view the sky. Looking up helps keep my feet on the ground.

Makes me think of the Coldplay song “A Sky Full of Stars.”

I'm not familiar with that song, but the title does make a pop culture reference to a line from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1036135479#post26