Is It Just Me Or Is the Night Sky Brighter?

reply to post by Plugin


Well I saw it yesterday afternoon, looking as normal as can be when seen during the day.

reply to post by Plugin

Originally posted by Plugin

Originally posted by Suspiria
The moon being seen in the sky during the day is a new thing now?

yea this morning when driving in my car to work (at 8.40 am), I couldn't believe how bright the moon was at day light.

Are you serious??

I think that this ↓ explanation should be easily understood, even by a 13 year old.
(and that is with me rounding ↑U↑P↑ a few years.)


I'll try it again. I added an additional segment: 'at the same time of day'
I didn't actually think that it needed to be stated again, but maybe it will help.

Originally posted by BrokenCircles

Think of it like this:

[color=FCF2BD]The Sun is relatively stationary.
The Earth is spinning.
That is what determines our days, yes?
So from our point of view, we generally see the sun at the same location in the sky, at the same time of day, from one day to the next.

[color=A9FCE6]The Moon is not stationary. It is orbiting around our planet. So common sense should tell us that the Moon cannot possibly be in the same location, at the same time of day, from one day to the next.

But why not? Because it is moving.

Originally posted by Plugin

It looked more like it was the sun then the moon really.

P.S. thAn


reply to post by Suspiria

I can't remember exactly how old I was at the time, but I can still remember where I was when I first noticed; My Grade School Playground. 12 yrs. old, at the absolute oldest. I can still picture it perfectly, in my head.

It was during recess. I Looked up and saw that there was a full moon, in the middle of the sky, and in the middle of the day. I couldn't believe it, at the time. I thought about it for awhile though, and realized; Well, Duh!!. Since it is moving, it makes perfect sense that it will be in a different location every day.

reply to post by BrokenCircles


I must have been about 5, sitting on the doorstep Sunday afternoon eating an ice cream. Added whoa factor of there being a sun dog, the sun and the moon in different parts of the sky at the same time.
My little mind was blown at that point 32 years ago, I don't get so excited about those things anymore.

reply to post by BrokenCircles


Serious? Just saying that I never seen the moon so bright in day light (of course I have seen the moon very often at day light but not as bright). I know it's not always on the same position as the sun is. That's why I thought; wtf is the sun doing there? but realised it was really the moon.

Perhaps I have never seen it at the postion (the moon) like on this morning, so I guess the sun was really shining on the moon at an angle it was like the sun itself.

Sorry about my grammar, not my first language.

Thanks OP for starting this thread I was thinking of doing one myself except I am not to good with posting pictures here at ATS.

I noticed the sky being brighter at night about 3 months ago and have been taking pictures of it. From where I am close to Ottawa Canada, I have seen the sky lit up both to the north and south at the same time. Ottawa would be to the west of me so it is not lights from the city.
The light is close to the horizon. I thought it could be because of the solar storms we have been having lately.

The other afternoon I saw a large orange straight line in the sky, so I took a picture, my husband said it was a sun dog, This was in the late afternoon about 5 P.M.

Very interesting times we are living in.

Originally posted by lightmere
Thanks OP for starting this thread I was thinking of doing one myself except I am not to good with posting pictures here at ATS.

I noticed the sky being brighter at night about 3 months ago and have been taking pictures of it. From where I am close to Ottawa Canada, I have seen the sky lit up both to the north and south at the same time. Ottawa would be to the west of me so it is not lights from the city.
The light is close to the horizon. I thought it could be because of the solar storms we have been having lately.

The other afternoon I saw a large orange straight line in the sky, so I took a picture, my husband said it was a sun dog, This was in the late afternoon about 5 P.M.

Very interesting times we are living in.

I noticed this too, there is a ring of luminosity all the way round the horizon line at dusk...I noticed it around june last year...

It gets less intense the further divergent from the sun's setting location...but never the less is a ring, this defies what the properties of sunlight and Earth's assumed convexity logically allows... its apparent that the sun is the source for it because of the symmetry of the divergent light gradient as it wraps around the horizon. Over head it is darker all the way down to the ground level of one's location.

Good Morning...The Moon moves on a 28 day cycle, also known as a Lunar Cycle, generally rising and setting about an hour later than it did the day before. For times and positions and phases, consult a good Farmer's Almanac. These handy little books are excellent primers on astronomical events and even explains them.

The reason every body notices a brighter night sky over the last couple of months...What ended about 3-4 months ago across the entirity of the Northern Hemisphere? ...Farming and plowing. Plowing, harvesting, tilling, and planting tend to throw up an incredible amount of dust.

Combine that with cold, dry...key word being DRY...cold, dry air normal in winter...you end up with brilliant night time vistas of the stars and moon not distorted by moist air or ice crystals or humidity..

A brilliant night time moon is nothing new... read a good historical account of farming in North America and you will find many instances of planting and harvesting by moon light. Here in the South, cotten was harvested by moonlight to avoid the heat of day and the cotten literally glowed in the moon light. This gave rise to nicknames for the Moon based on the time of year...aka Harvest Moon, Planter's Moon, or Hunter's Moon.

Originally posted by AlreadyGone
The reason every body notices a brighter night sky over the last couple of months...What ended about 3-4 months ago across the entirity of the Northern Hemisphere? ...Farming and plowing. Plowing, harvesting, tilling, and planting tend to throw up an incredible amount of dust.

Combine that with cold, dry...key word being DRY...cold, dry air normal in winter...you end up with brilliant night time vistas of the stars and moon not distorted by moist air or ice crystals or humidity

No farming going on here for a couple of months, there's still 2 feet of snow on the ground. Farming was finished by October, but it isn't dusty around here, and the sky wasn't this bright over Christmas season.
For a half moon last night, it was very bright out.

There was also a bright light green (cloud?) last night, it was likely northern lights, but it wasn't moving. I thought they always moved, I've never seen a stationary northern light before, but the bright light green was the right colour.

I came in and looked up sun flares, and apparently we were getting hit with solar action, so I assume that was it.

reply to post by Spiratio


Yes, thats exactly it! Thanks for finding the words for me. "A ring of luminosity around the horizon" is exactly what it looks like. Like something is lighting up the horizon line, its faint, but still unusual enough to be noticed.

Maybe its viewed better by people who live higher north? I don't know. glad other people have noticed this as well...

Thanks for all the input everyone, good things to know. Im not claiming this to be a supernatural event, just thought it was interesting as Ive never seen huge bright white clouds at night before. Lots to think about it!

i noticed this too. my 12 year old stopped the other night and looked up kind of oddly and mentioned that she'd never seen the stars so bright. i'm in the middle of a city. when we can see a really good amount of stars it's unusual. maybe it's the lack of dust. maybe it's nothing. maybe it's something. we'll never know.

oh, another poster mentioned both horizons being lit up at once. i did notice several weeks ago a weird glow on the horizon but it wasn't the sun setting because i could still tell exactly where the sun was setting. it had a greenish tint. i passed it off as something going on in the city. i never found out what it was. it lasted for 2 days.

I made a comment to my wife last night about how unusually bright the sky was last night even though it was cloudy and raining. I'm in southern Ontario. Weird I guess.

Reporting in from the maritimes here. I noticed the same thing last night.... I was going outside to flood my homemade rink in the backyard, brought my flashlight as usual, only I did not need the flashlight. Cannot say what made it seem more bright, but it was. The moon looked normal, there has been snow on the ground for weeks, not sure what did it. I did save my batteries though, so I won't complain

Either it was more bright out, or my eyes were able to adjust to the darkness better than usual. I usually do have decent night vision, as I spend a lot of time outdoors in the dark looking at the sky when metoer showers are going on and such. Camping too.

reply to post by snowspirit


That's the point I was making. It takes a couple of months for the dust to clear and settle out of the atmosphere. Thus, if farming ended about October... move ahead a few months and by Feburary and March, the sky looks brighter at night.

But that's not nearly as exciting as say Polar Shift or Aliens or Chemtrail GeoEngineering... so that being said..

The brighter sky is the result of a secret government plot run by the Nazis about to return to earth and they need the clearer nights for better navigation. The entire operation is laid out in an upcoming movie that is really not fictional... and they will be fought by the aliens under the Denver International Airport and try to overthrow the Nazi takeover in the secret US government run by the reptilian clone of Obama.

There... is that what you wanted to hear?

reply to post by AlreadyGone


that does seem like a reasonable explanation to me (the dust clearing) but it's not as fun as supposing it's something more mysterious. i do think the planet is changing rapidly right now.

Great post....I actually just came back from Mexico to Atlanta, GA and noticed that the morning brightness seems to be coming a lot earlier here. Prior to leaving it was at least 7-7:10 before the sun came up and now it seems to be bright about 6:20 or so.

Originally posted by wrdwzrd
I feel a little odd making this post, its not normally the kind of thing I would make a post about. I live in Vancouver, BC and have noticed that the night sky is really bright tonight. I walked out of my house at around 7-7:30, its dark and there is a gigantic white cloud up in the sky, super bright! It was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

I just stared at it and wondered why nobody else noticed? I thought maybe something is lighting up the clouds? But what?

It also seems like whenever I look up into the sky lately, even if its a beautiful blue afternoon sky, there's the moon just glowing super white! It's always glowing in the sky regardless of the time of day....

Has anyone else noticed these things? I guess it's possible that in my 30something years of life I never noticed these were normal events until now but somehow I don't think so.....it might be nothing, just seems weird....

Tonight, without searching for it, I came across this article -

www.in5d.com...

Such a strange synchronicity!

Thoughts?

edit on 2-3-2012 by wrdwzrd because: (no reason given)

I live in the Fraser Valley. My experience on the brightness outside is comprised of some ideas:

1) Brightness caused by changing seasons (winter to spring...hence longer days and brighter nights)
2) City lights emit light into the sky making it appear brighter
3) Low lying pollution in the sky which city lights reflect off of making the sky appear brighter

Now, from time to time out here the skies are very dark and crystal clear stars are seen. But as soon as I make a trip to let's say Surrey or Langley, the skies do not appear as dark (hence city lights)

To see a bright white cloud in the night sky is something unusual but it could be due to the gases which are in it too. Not all clouds are specifically composed of hydrogen and oxygen. Some have chemicals in them too, like sulphur.

FYI, I just found this article...maybe it would be of help...and it does make sense:

Night-Shining Clouds are Getting Brighter

earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

For reasons no one fully understands, the brightness wiggles up and down in step with solar activity, with fewer clouds forming when the Sun is most active. The biggest variability is in the far north. Underlying the changes caused by the Sun, however, is a trend toward brighter clouds. The upward trend in brightness, says DeLand, reveals subtle changes in the atmosphere that may be linked to greenhouse gases.

Polar mesospheric clouds are extremely sensitive to changes in atmospheric water vapor and temperature. The clouds form only when temperatures drop below -130 degrees Celsius (-200 Fahrenheit), when the scant amount of water high in the atmosphere freezes into ice clouds. This happens most often in far northern and southern latitudes (above 50 degrees) in the summer when, counter-intuitively, the mesosphere is coldest.

Changes in temperature or humidity in the mesosphere make the clouds brighter and more frequent. Colder temperatures allow more water to freeze, while an increase in water vapor allows more ice clouds to form. Increased water vapor also leads to the formation of larger ice particles that reflect more light.

The fact that polar mesospheric clouds are getting brighter suggests that the mesosphere is getting colder and more humid, says DeLand. Increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could account for both phenomena. In the mesosphere, carbon dioxide radiates heat into space, causing cooling. More methane, on the other hand, puts more water vapor into the atmosphere because sunlight breaks methane into water molecules at high altitudes.

So, to sum up then, it would seem to me that changes in temperature or humidity in the mesosphere make the clouds brighter and more frequent. Colder temperatures allow more water to freeze, while an increase in water vapor allows more ice clouds to form. Increased water vapor also leads to the formation of larger ice particles that reflect more light.

Just a thought. Nice to meet you fellow British Columbian!

Originally posted by wrdwzrd
reply to post by SarnholeOntarable

 

wow! I just read that somewhere, that possibly as we get closer to the galactic alignment and closer to the middle of the galaxy that the night sky is getting brighter!

keep your eyes peeled, Id love to know if anyone else notices this...

Buddy...you are going nuts!!!!

Settle down, and read my previous post...maybe that will calm your nerves a bit

Btw, it is still winter season so of course our atmosphere here is much colder than during summer months. But if we see this activity occur again in summer, we may want to revisit your post again

I live in the southern hemisphere (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and have noticed the same thing last night, what a weird coincidence. I went outside and noticed there were lots of stars in the sky, I counted 20 without trying too hard. Believe me, even in a clear night, with all the pollution and luminosity from a large city, that's 15 too many. It was odd enough that I fired up Google Skymap from my Android phone, and I remember identifying Syrius and Mars. Now that I've read your thread I do think the moon was brighter than usual but I'll have to confirm that.

Great thread!

reply to post by Skywatcher2011


very interesting!!! we all know the climate is changing (no matter what side of the boat you're on about that) so that really could be a cause.

I agree wholeheartedly with you, it is getting brighter. Big Cosmic happenins goin on & it's all good!