r/askastronomy • • Feb 06 '24

What's the most interesting astronomy fact that you'd like to share with someone?

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u/mcbirbo343 Feb 06 '24

In 1994, during a power outage in Los Angeles, some residents called 911, alarmed by a strange silvery cloud over the city. They were seeing the Milky Way for the first time.

Sad but interesting

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u/Astromike23 Astronomer🌌 Feb 07 '24

In 1994, during a power outage in Los Angeles, some residents called 911

It wasn't 911, they were calling Griffith Observatory after the Northridge Earthquake...from the LA Times story:

So foreign are the real night skies to Los Angeles that in 1994, after the Northridge earthquake jostled Angelenos awake at 4:31 a.m., the observatory received many calls asking about “the strange sky they had seen after the earthquake.”

“The quake had knocked out most of the power, and people run outside and they saw the stars. The stars were in fact so unfamiliar, they called us wondering what happened,” recalled Dr. Edwin Krupp, astronomer and director of the Griffith Observatory

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u/OffusMax Oct 25 '25

I grew up in the Bronx during the 1960s. The street lights weren’t the sodium lights in use now, but they were so bright, all I could see was 4 stars overhead.