Editing 2121: Light Pollution

{{comic
| number    = 2121
| date      = March 8, 2019
| title     = Light Pollution
| image     = light_pollution.png
| titletext = It's so sad how almost no one alive today can remember seeing the galactic rainbow, the insanity nebula, or the skull and glowing eyes of the Destroyer of Sagittarius.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic shows how {{w|Light pollution|light pollution}} in cities affects what you can see from the night sky. The first three panels show realistic examples of what you could see from the sky inside a large city, in the suburbs and far away from light pollution.  These panels roughly correlate on the {{w|Bortle Scale}} to 8-9 (city), 5-6 (suburbs) and 2-3 (remote area).

The last panel contrasts these for comedic effect with fake things that are not actually present in the night sky.{{Citation needed}} The "Ships of the Sky King" may be a reference to an elven legend in {{w|J. R. R. Tolkien}}'s works, in which several elven ships sail tangentially off the planet of Middle Earth and into the sky. This story was previously mentioned in [[1255: Columbus]]. "{{w|Celestial spheres|Crystal spheres}}" is an ancient theory about the heavens and what it was that held up the stars, before it was commonly accepted that space could be made of hard vacuum and celestial bodies held there by laws of inertia and gravity and vast distances.  The spheres are nested inside each other concentrically.  Randall proposes they are held by {{w|latticework}} like that which supports the Eiffel Tower, and that the lattice structure could be seen long ago when the sky was much darker. It is also a possible reference to the science fiction short-story "{{w|The_Crystal_Spheres|The Crystal Spheres}}" by David Brin, where the solar system is surrounded by hard crystal spheres that have to be broken before leaving as an explanation of the Fermi Paradox. Furthermore, in the lore of Dungeons & Dragons, the solar system is also enclosed in a massive crystal sphere, with other solar systems in similar solar systems, separated by "the flow". 

Although all crystals do have a {{w|Crystal structure|crystal lattice}}, as in the [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crystal meaning 3] of the word "crystal" in Merriam-Webster (<i>a body that [...] has a regularly repeating internal arrangement of its atoms and often external plane faces</i>), these lattices are sub-microscopic and would be invisible in the sky.  Additionally, crystal structure was not yet known at the time that the celestial spheres theory was popular.

In consensus reality, the sky does contain many invisible objects that can observe us and/or provide major structures of our society, such as satellites, {{w|Mesosphere#Exploration_and_uses|nearcraft}}, and drones, but these are usually invisible due to size and distance more than brightness.

The title text starts off sounding like a legitimate statement about light pollution.  It is common to remark that the vast majority of people never see things in the night sky that were commonly seen by our ancestors every night prior to industrialization, such as the {{w|Milky Way}} or now-obscure phenomena such as {{w|Zodiacal light}}, {{w|Airglow}} or {{w|Gegenschein}}.  The title text then further adds to the humor of the last panel by describing non-existent features, which could be references to {{w|H. P. Lovecraft}} as he often refers to beasts the possible size that “The Destroyer of Sagittarius” would have to be ({{w|Sagittarius (constellation)|Sagittarius}} is one of the constellations of the zodiac and {{w|Sagittarius A*}} a black hole at the center of the {{w|Milky Way}} inside of that constellation.). He also often speaks of insanity and color, connecting the two.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Four views of the night sky are shown among each other. The text on top reads:]
:'''Light Pollution and the Disappearing Night Sky'''

:[The first view shows only a few bright stars visible on a fairly light gray-brownish background. The inline text on the left top is:]
:High Light Pollution
:(Cities)

:[On the second view more stars are visible and some faint blurry white clouds on a dark-gray background are visible.]
:Moderate Light Pollution
:(Suburbs)

:[A lot of stars, even partly colored, and a clear image of many clouds on a dark background are shown.]
:Low Light Pollution
:(Very remote areas)

:[The last image shows the same region as above but with even more exposed stars and clouds, the colors are also more explicit. A faint lattice of triangles overlaying the image to its full extent and three ghastly silhouettes of sail-ships are shown embedded in clouds. The text on the top left reads:]
:No Light Pollution
:(How the sky should look)
:[Four arrows are pointing to some triangles:]
:Lattice of the crystal spheres
:[Three arrows are indicating the sail-ships:]
:Ships of the Sky King

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]