The Night Sky in Taipei

I have been in Taipei for almost 6.5 months and I have never seen any stars. Of course, on cloudy nights nobody can see the stars, but even on clear nights I see no stars. I haven't been vigilant in observing every night, I just casually have never seen the stars.

I think the problem is "light pollution", basically the light from the city drowns out the light from the sky.  Not all objects in the sky are of the same apparent brightness, here is a table abstracted from the Wikipedia article on magnitude:

–26.74 Sun (398,359 times brighter than mean full moon)
–12.92 Maximum brightness of full Moon
–4.89 Maximum brightness of Venus
–2.94 Maximum brightness of Jupiter
–2.91 Maximum brightness of Mars
–2.45 Maximum brightness of Mercury
–1.47 Brightest star (except for the Sun)Sirius
–0.72 Second-brightest star: Canopus

This is in a logarithmic scale so the difference between brightest Venus and the brightest star is more than 2000X (4.89-1.47=3.42, 10^3.42 = ~2630). So in the Taipei sky, it's possible to see the sun.

And in this next shot we see both the moon and Venus.

You can see Venus as a small spec of light below the moon and to the left.
I wonder if any one in NYC has seen the stars? I doubt it.

But there is an upside to this situation, while in a noncity environment you can't see anything on a cloudy night. But in Taipei on a cloudy night, you can see the clouds, they are illuminated from the city lights from below.