Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

#NPRNightSky: Send Us Your Pix Of The World's Least Light-Polluted Skies

In Namibia, a clear view of the Milky Way is a nightly norm.
Arctic-Images
/
Getty Images
In Namibia, a clear view of the Milky Way is a nightly norm.

When you look out your window at night, can you see the stars? Or are the heavens just a murky haze?

If you're not seeing stars,you're not alone. A new report says that 80 percent of the world lives under light-polluted skies — and the Milky Way is hidden from more than a third of humanity. Blame it on the artificial lights that shine at night.

<a href="http://n.pr/1TAuCBq"><strong>Click here to subscribe</strong></a><strong> </strong><em>to our weekly global health and development email.</em>
/ NPR
/
NPR
Click here to subscribe to our weekly global health and development email.

So who gets those pristine, ink-black sky conditions? You can, of course, find a great night sky in any country — as long as you're far from city lights. But according to the study, the 20 countries with the least light pollution are in Africa and Oceania.

Here's the list: Chad, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Guinea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Papua New Guinea, Eritrea, Mali, Tanzania, Solomon Islands, Mauritania, Uganda and Sudan.

Here at Goats and Soda, we'd love to see photos of the starry night skies if you live — or have spent time — in one of these countries. (Or even if you don't live there and have a great night sky photo, send it along.)

Tweet your photos to @NPRGoatsandSoda with the hashtag #NPRNightSky from now until Wednesday, June 22, and we'll feature some of them on our blog.

Need inspiration? Here are some photos we found on Twitter:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags
More Stories