It's worth pointing out that light pollution doesn't mean you can't enjoy the stars. After 20 years living in cities and forgetting much of the sky I loved as a country child, I moved from the heart of Manhattan - a 'white' area in this map (http://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html) - to a suburb half an hour away which is colored red.
In the city, I could see Jupiter clearly, and three moons through an ordinary pair of 12x36 binoculars from my 19th floor apartment window. With a very tired $40 yard sale 4" Newtonian refractor I could see bands on the planet on a winter's night. With the naked eye, the Summer Triangle, Capella, Sirius, and a few other very bright stars. None of it all that impressive from a quick glance upwards, but still stuff there to study with conscious effort.
Out in my new back yard, the view is breathtaking by comparison. On a very clear night with dark-adapted eyes there is just the hint of the Milky Way. On a normal night, the Pleiades are clear. The Andromeda galaxy is lovely through binoculars. But the real treat is the constellations - gorgeous and vivid, separated, teachable to my children.
I've been up Mauna Kea and nothing on earth can compare to that, but as an everyday treat, a bit of mythological theatre wheeling in the sky on a dark night, or even an evening's worth of nebula hunting, I'm blown away by my heavily light polluted back garden.
The light pollution map isn't very good and it doesn't give the full picture. We do astroimaging in the middle of a very bright area, but we are on a hill. A little elevation goes a long way. It also helps that our scopes are in an enclosure which blocks lights from the sides. We can occassionally see the Milky Way on clearer nights.
At my new house on a hill, you can see a huge difference being on the deck versus being down (about 50 feet) in the back yard.
People who are really interested in doing some viewing should check out local astronomy organizations. They will host star parties and will know the best places locally to do observations.
The only street light within half a mile is about 1300 feet away and about 150 feet down even from the backyard. It may have more to do with the neighbors than anything else - on the deck I am next to or above all neighbors with my (darkened) house blocking light from the neighbors up the hill. The closest neighbors have few windows on the side of the house facing me.
It is quite a deck, but the backyard is a couple flights of stairs down from the backdoor which itself is on the bottom floor of the house.
yeah, apparently my favorite star-watching location (on the roof of my grandparents' cabin in the shadow of Thorodin mountain, near Nederland, CO) is yellow in this map. But at 9200 feet and with mountains and trees blocking direct light from all directions, the sky is just as clear as my other favorite star-watching place (Beecher Island battleground, in one of those completely unshaded regions on the Colorado-Kansas border.)
Light pollution only has an impact on observing "faint fuzzies" - galaxies, nebulae, and other objects that are, well, faint and distant. It has essentially no impact on bright things such as almost anything within the Solar System, most of the nearby stars, some star clusters, etc.
The other big problem for astronomy, seeing (or air turbulence) is exactly backwards. It's the main enemy of seeing planets or other high resolution targets, but it has no impact on faint fuzzies, because your eye can't see much detail on those anyway.
This is why from my backyard, in one of the most light-polluted places on Earth, I can observe planets just fine. However, nebulae, or even the outline of the Milky Way, are difficult or impossible to see.
In the city, I could see Jupiter clearly, and three moons through an ordinary pair of 12x36 binoculars from my 19th floor apartment window. With a very tired $40 yard sale 4" Newtonian refractor I could see bands on the planet on a winter's night. With the naked eye, the Summer Triangle, Capella, Sirius, and a few other very bright stars. None of it all that impressive from a quick glance upwards, but still stuff there to study with conscious effort.
Out in my new back yard, the view is breathtaking by comparison. On a very clear night with dark-adapted eyes there is just the hint of the Milky Way. On a normal night, the Pleiades are clear. The Andromeda galaxy is lovely through binoculars. But the real treat is the constellations - gorgeous and vivid, separated, teachable to my children.
I've been up Mauna Kea and nothing on earth can compare to that, but as an everyday treat, a bit of mythological theatre wheeling in the sky on a dark night, or even an evening's worth of nebula hunting, I'm blown away by my heavily light polluted back garden.