The sky is bright against the landscape if you're far enough away from civilization. In an urban environment, the night sky is black with some stars at best, blue or pink at worst, and spots of artificial light overpower it here and there.

Even really far away, in complete darkness, with the sky literally covered by a million stars, the sky mostly remains pitch black to the naked eye, with very faint bits of color from planets like Mars, some stars, and some nebulae. It's as black as the line of the forest that obscures it, which you only vcan see by the way it covers the stars.

Unfortunately, all these beautiful colors from the article are mostly invisible to a naked human eye. Long-exposure shots are the best chance to register these colors, telescopes help, but only for a tiny bit if the sky.

everyone has different hobbies. there was a time when i knew what the forecast at night in much more detail than the day specifically for making plans for viewing the stars. most people don't know what the current phase of the moon is, but it's the face of my watch. most people (not on this site) don't know what the difference between [] and {} would be. how many people know what the term top dead center references? how many people actually know that there's a proper term for the sideline on a football pitch other than sideline? how many people know exactly how many episodes are in DBZ or One Piece? on and on and on

Dr. Clark is pretty active on Reddit. He's helped me process astrophotography data in the past, particularly when using DSLRs

http://reddit.com/u/rnclark

Yeah, it's on some other posts too.