Blog

What can I say? I am not a city lover. Yes, I know cities hold the entertainment and an ever-changing cultural thrive. That is why you visit them, at least I visit them. One of the major feelings when I have been in cities is a disconnection with the nature around. I do not just referring to trees and forest, ’cause there are indeed interesting cities with great parks and forests in their surrounds. I mean the whole, nature around and nature above.

Recently I visited Berlín and Stockholm. Great parks, for sure, and dark cities when you compared them with Spanish or American cities. And yet too much light pollution. Have you heard about light pollution? Well, as I see it, it is spending taxes on illuminating the sky… for nothing! And a pain for sky watchers.

Putting in simply, light pollution is the mark left by an inefficient public light system illuminating cities. The sky is too bright and we completely lost the appreciation of a real dark night. Today there is technology for improving light systems, but it is expensive when you think about a whole country.

Clever people have done the numbers: about 80% of stars visible by sight are not visible from today’s cities. The results comes from the light pollution map made space satellites (Light Pollution Map). Last data results: 2015. Bellow, from left to right, I present you sections of that map centered on the three most important astrophysical observatories of the word: Atacama Desert (Chile), Big Island (Hawai’i) and La Palma (Canary Islands).

• 

• 

• 

Even for the best and darkest skies of the world, there is work to do on fighting light pollution. Indeed, recently this year, the street lights of my town have been properly renovated. Additionally, there are interesting initiative such as Stars For All and Starlight Foundation that remind us the importance of preserving clear, dark skies. Hope to see an improvement on next update!

Finally, what defines a good observatory is not just light pollution. However, that’s for another entry.

Every step of our life is towards an infinite cliff of possibilities. . Although those possibilities do not appear magically in the air. And watch out, you may end up into the nothingness. Actually, today possibilities come from the sum of actions carried out in our past. Most of those actions were silly decisions, unconscious bias of the confort mind that did not matter then, but matter, a lot, now.

It happens many times in life. We are so into something that we lose perspective and forget that everyday we are becoming. We slowly change and, hence, become something new. Patiently and silently. Little changes accumulated through time, which slowly shaped the future you. Physically and psychologically.

Its your choice to give some credit to it or ignore it. After all, changes are going to happen. However, you are the only one that can put attention and meaning on your surround. Where do you stand for? Are you aware of your changes ? Or have you suddenly realized that you got 60 and do not how?

As far as there is mobility, cleverness and passion, never is too late to take your life where you want it to be. Not today. Not right now, but tomorrow, when the sum of your actions allow you to reach the possibilities that you wanted, looked for and worked for.

When one gets into the world of computing and coding , the first thing that one learns is the famous “Hello world!”.  Who have put their hands on coding languages, they know what I am talking about. Or, even better, we may say that it is learnt how to teach a machine to send you greetings back, like if there is someone in there. I can assure that, actually, there is someone here. Although it looks like a machine and behaves as a machine, it is much more than a machine. So, here we go: Hello world!