h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In cities, people are often dissapointed that they can see absolutely no stars. However, when I look up I see another interesting question: what exactly is that colour? It's certainly not black or dark blue. It has aspects of orange, purple, brown... there's more up there than first meets the eye...

Pollution, mostly...

That's a bit unfair. I'm looking out of the window right now (except when I'm typing) and all I see is clear blue Manchester sky. With a very thin airplane trail, admittedly, but only the one.

Oh, well, Manchester, you should have said!

A blue sky in Manchester

I'm colourblind. The sky in the middle of the day can look anything from green to pink when everyone else says it's blue.

The night sky can be almost any colour, but it's never black.

I have a very pretty sunset outside - all yellows and oranges... so lovely...

Hmm, to me the night sky is black. Except for where the moonlight hits the clouds.

In a large city you normally see the reflection of all the lights in the clouds. Lots of yellow sodium from street lights, red/blue/green/yellow of ad's and so on.

Its lovely when the sky goes that sort of dark indigo colour in mid evening .
We dont have much pollution around here as im almost in the countryside.

Ooh yes, love that, especially like last night with just a sliver of a new moon!

I was just looking out of my window..where i am is on a big hilll n you can see london in the distance ...just noticed the differene in the colour of the sky!(dont usually tak that much notice)..its a nice lue where i am..but over london it looks a really nasty grey from here.

The moon is gorgeous isnt it..espcially when as you said youve just got the first slivers showing.

I saw a very interesting view the other day. It was dark, and the moon was completely hidden by clouds. However, you could see the light of the moon shining through a gap in the clouds and illuminating part of them. It was really rather poetic.

In this area (mountains of s-w Virginia), it's usually pretty velvety navy blue at night.

We still haven't given a name to the colour of city-scape night sky.

Goo-plus?

It's just generally black at home (a bedroom-community/suburb of Philadelphia).

a lovely black with twinkling stars up there.

And when I was in London, the night sky was usually an orangy-pink...

Hmm, usually around big cities if there is any sort of dust or water vapour in the air the sky's the colour of reflected sodium lighting... one reason it's not a lot of use having a telescope in a city...

Oragaque. [orr-ag-akk]
I don't like the colour, though I do love city lights at night. And the way shadows stream through a car as you drive under lamps. And the moon is beautiful, even behind clouds. It makes winter worth the cold, just how pretty our world is.