It has already been established that their statements are biased , Source ? <| sep |> I think the Milky Way is what people were seeing and reporting , if I remember the story correctly . You can see stars and planets in most parts of even the brightest cities , but only a few tens or hundreds at absolute best . If you live anywhere near a population centre of appreciable size , you ' ll never see the Milky Way unless you go further afield . You can ' t see the thousands that are visible to the naked eye , or the millions that are too small to individually discern that form the shape of of the galaxy , or make out any of the dust lanes , nebulae or other galaxies . In the UK , for example , there are only a few places it can be seen at all . Benelux drowns it out almost completely . In the US , you can walk from Boston to Washington DC and beyond , never once able to see the Milky Way even under perfect sky conditions .