Stars & The Milky Way | Joshua Tree National Park

Stars & The Milky Way | Joshua Tree National Park

A silhouetted Joshua tree against a night sky landscape featuring our Milky Way galaxy. Joshua Tree National Park is an American national park in southeastern California, east of San Bernardino and Los Angeles and north of Palm Springs. It is named after the Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) native to the Mojave Desert.

Joshua Tree National Park

https://www.nps.gov/jotr/index.htm

The Fading Milky Way

Light pollution is a growing environmental problem that threatens to erase the night sky before its time. A recent study revealed that perhaps two-thirds of the world's population can no longer look upwards at night and see the Milky Way—a hazy swath of stars that on warm summer nights spans the sky from horizon to horizon.

The Milky Way is dimming, not because the end of the Universe is near, but rather as a result of light pollution: the inadvertent illumination of the atmosphere from street lights, outdoor advertising, homes, schools, airports and other sources. Every night billions of bulbs send their energy skyward where microscopic bits of matter—air molecules, airborne dust, and water vapor droplets—reflect much of the wasted light back to Earth. 

(Source: NASA)

Learn more:

International Dark-Sky Association

https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution

Globe at Night

https://www.globeatnight.org

Night Sky Network (NASA JPL)

https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

Image Credit: U.S. National Park Service/Anna Cirimele

Image Date: July 17, 2023

Release Date: Dec. 31, 2023

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