Light Pollution News

albertw

Hi,

This mail went to the ilpac list yesterday (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilpac/) so apologies for those of you who get this twice!

* ILPAC is now officially the Irish Section of the International Dark Sky Association. The IDA site www.darksky.org, is well worth a look through, and they have an online membership form if you wish to join, as part of being a section we are asked to encourage people to join the IDA. If you would rather donate money to ILPAC however we will be more than happy to quickly appoint a treasurer and accept your donation!

* Colm has been in touch with Killarney Co. Co., and several architects who have been involved in getting Light Pollution into their development plan. I'll let him give the details later.

* I have sent in a submission to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Co. Co. Their website says they are still accepting submissions, however small print in one part of the website says the deadline was last June! We'll wait and see what they say. The submission can be found at
www.irishastronomy.org/~ilpac/dlrcoco.pdf (540kb).

* Dave Gradwell is co-ordingating plans to make Birr a light Pollution Free town. Anyone in the area who would like to help out should get in touch with Dave at astrofud AT eircom.net.

* I've been in touch with the Irish Region of the Institute of Lighting Engineers, who seem very supportive of our aims. Paddy Craven, who is the Irish Contact has also told me that Dublin City Council has "removed Low Pressure Sodium from [their] specification for new developments" and they are to be replaced with better fixtures which eliminate upward light. I
dont have the specifications of the newer fixtures, so they may not be enclosed FCO and there may be some spill over the horizon but its bound to be an inprovement on the low pressure orange sodium lamps that are currently used.

* Prof. Mark Bailey from Armagh Observatory has been in touch with us, and the Observatory is very supportive of our efforts also. He mentioned that Armagh City Council had a policy on light pollution in place, though the Council haven't responded yet to my email enquiring for the details on that. They have also kindly send us c1000 of their light pollution leaflets for distributing at meetings, events etc. The Observatory Dark Sky page is
http://star.arm.ac.uk/darksky/armagh.html, and Mark Stronges dark skies 4
NI page is http://www.darkskies4ni.co.uk/

* We have put together publicity leaflet, aimed mainly at astronomy folks, at http://www.irishastronomy.org/~ilpac/ilpacposter.pdf (240kb). Please print out and distribute at your local astronomy club meetings and public events etc.

* A contact list if available for the regional contacts for ILPAC. Its been broken down by county council areas and is available at www.irishastronomy.org/~ilpac/contacts.html. The council website and ILPAC contact are listed. You will notice that there is a severe lack of contact people! So if you live in these areas please get in touch and put your name forward. We are looking for people who would be willing to give occasional talks on light pollution to local clubs etc., and to keep an eye on local planning. We are building up information to be used for submissions and objections to planners, which you can use, and we will have a standard presentation (ie lots of photographs and diagrams!) for talks, so there shouldnt be too much work for any one person to do. Don't worry about not knowing details of lighting engineering, we can get experienced people to give us guidance on that if its needed.

* At whirlpool someone asked if we had a list of suppliers for full cut off lights. I've asked around several hardware outlets and got predictable blank stares back. I think the best advice we can give is to use low power security lights and ensure that they are pointing directly downward. This isn't much help for people looking for more decorative lighting etc. If anyone has the time to chase this matter up with B&Q, woodies etc please let us know!

* The website has been having some problems over the past few days. The problem appears to be resolved now.

* Many of you will be aware of the raised profile light pollution has been getting in the UK since a committee of the UK parliment released a report advising that light pollution is something that needs to be acted on. A question did get raised at Prime Ministers Questions in the Commons yesterday by Tom Harris and after some initial laughter, Mr. Blair responded by saing the government will respond soon to the report. At least it got a mention, and made it to some politcal review programs on UK TV last night. This article, http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~dbl/cfds/tes.jpg, appeared in The Times a couple of weeks ago also.

Thats about it for the moment!

Cheers,
~Al

halenger

Will we see ye at Astro-Expo 2003?

It'd be a good chance to get out there with the public and to meet some of the colleges doing Astronomy Courses etc.

Chance to promote yourselves. Make some contacts etc.

albertw

Hi,

Originally posted by halenger
Will we see ye at Astro-Expo?

I'll most likley be away that weekend, plus we don't really have enough material yet to have a stand. Dave Gradwell will be mentioning us at his webcam talk though and giving out leaflets with the mailing list address etc.

We're still working on articles and presentations etc. etc. and when we have this together we'll be sending an article to A&S also.

Cheers,
~Al

halenger

Sure there's always next year...