Illumination, or Lack Thereof

If you go to the Viewpoint after dark, you see a beautiful array of lights in the great expanse that makes up the "view" one sees from the Viewpoint. Some of the lights are orangish, some bluish, others white. Some are red, some are green; some are bright, some dull.Without carefully examining their configuration, you might think that every night the lights are the same. In fact, just which lights are shining where changes a good deal from night to night. The more you know about where each light is, the more you can begin to understand about the social or demographic patterns governing their illumination or lack thereof. By contrast, the moon, planets and stars appear and disappear with no relationship to human activity, with the exception of the effects of pollution on the visibility of the celestial bodies in the night sky.