BOLOGNA – We receive from Alessia Scarso a picture and a comment: “I was very impressed by how you can see the stars in the center of Bologna from the only portion of the sky I have available, and I tried the startrail. Here is the result.
I didn’t expect such a clear sky. If in just a few days dolphins and whales have returned to Sardinia, hares have returned to the city of Milan, ducks have returned to the fountains of Rome, and fish can be seen in the clean canals of Venice… we can say that the stars have returned to the Po Valley. If there is something comforting and refreshing to observe in these difficult days, it is the extraordinary nature that is reborn”.
The slowdown in human activity actually seems to have made the celestial vault more observable. As satellite images show, the lower pollution in the Po Valley is demonstrated by new data obtained from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite that show a decrease in pollution, specifically nitrogen dioxide emissions, over all of Italy.
This decrease is particularly visible in northern Italy, and coincides with the adoption of measures taken to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Alessia Scarso is director and author also of some images recognized worthy of Epod (Earth Science Picture of the Day https://epod.usra.edu/).
https://epod.usra.edu/blog/2020/01/slender-moon-over-modica-italy.html
Here is the wonderful footage of the shooting.
We recommend viewing in full screen mode.