[ATMoB-discuss] Visible dust lanes in Milky Way?

[George Roberts]

> Was I seeing things, or misinterpreting what I saw, or can that actually be seen on really clear nights?

I'm sure you weren't 'seeing things'.

You can easily see lots of detail in the milky way at a dark site at night.  I saw quite a bit of detail just this past Monday night 
from the Catskills in NY.  I probably could have counted 20 or 30 dark nebula bumps.

For example between the head of the northern cross and the cross star (deneb and satr) there is a dark area roughly circular.  I 
pointed this out to a few dozen campers.  And then as you go to the right (south) from here the split down the middle of the milky 
way becomes more and more apparent and one 'leg' fades out.  I remember looking in the Sagitarius region (actually just over in 
Ophiuchus) and seeing the V shaped dark nebula there and being surprised I could see it naked eye.  Pretty much all the large 
structures you can see in this picture are visible naked eye (the top half of this pic is visible from USA this week - does the top 
half of this picture remind you of what you saw?).  But the resolution of naked eye milky way viewing is pretty poor - maybe 3-5 
degrees resolution?

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~wang/gallery/picutres/wholeSky-summer.html

Incidentally, the flat bottomed V shapped structure mentioned is almost dead center in the above photo - a bit to the right of the 
brightest part of the milky way.

- George Roberts