[TO BE TRANSLATED/ABRIDGED]

….

Si è conclusa venerdì 27-3  la missione toscana della rete di ricerca europea “Loss of the Night“, avviata il 21-22 marzo scorso con alcune misurazioni a Torniella, frazione di Roccastrada (GR) e proseguita nel corso della settimana con altre misurazioni in zona urbana, presso l’Istituto di Biometeorologia (IBIMET) del CNR di Sesto Fiorentino.

Gli strumenti e gli “strumentisti”

La campagna di misure prevedeva la raccolta di dati di luminosità del fondo del cielo tramite vari tipi di strumentazione al fine di confrontare tecniche differenti di valutazione dell’inquinamento luminoso. I dieci partecipanti alla spedizione, provenienti da Germania, Austria, Grecia, Spagna, Ungheria, Olanda e Italia hanno portato in val di Farma una batteria di strumenti piuttosto variegata.

Oltre a vari Sky Quality Meter (meglio noti come buiometri a chi negli scorsi anni ha conosciuto il progetto della BuioMetria Partecipativa), sono stati installati due “Light Meter” progettati dall’astronomo austriaco Guenther Wuchterl in occasione dell’anno internazionale dell’astronomia (2009) e oggi diffusi in numerosi osservatori astronomici, e due sensori attualmente esistenti come pezzi unici: il “Digilum” del tecnico olandese Henk Spoelstra, responsabile della principale rete di monitoraggio dell’inquinamento luminoso in Olanda, e l’ASTMON, creato da alcuni astronomi catalani e utilizzato in tutta la Catalogna come riferimento per la valutazione del cielo notturno.

Oltre ai sensori, gli esperti avevano con sé varie macchine fotografiche dotate di appositi obiettivi per catturare immagini complete del cielo.

Un esito curioso e inatteso

Al fine di svolgere le misurazioni in condizioni controllate, il Comune di Roccastrada ha autorizzato lo spegnimento dell’illuminazione pubblica durante parte della notte. In questo modo i ricercatori, oltre ad avere la garanzia di un buio quasi completo nel sito di studio, hanno potuto misurare anche l’effetto legato allo spegnimento delle luci.

Mentre l’analisi dei dati richiederà  un lavoro di diversi mesi e sarà  successivamente parte di pubblicazioni scientifiche del gruppo Loss of the Night, la missione ha consentito di ottenere anche riscontri immediati e inattesi.

Un’immagine che ha destato notevole interesse nei partecipanti alla campagna, ed è stata condivisa nei giorni scorsi in tutti i social network per gli addetti ai lavori, è uno scatto fatto da uno dei partecipanti durante la prima notte di misure. Zoltan Kollath, astronomo professionista dell’Università  di Savaria, Ungheria, è riuscito a catturare l’ombra proiettata in cielo del campanile della chiesa di Torniella.

L’effetto è risultato visibile in quanto, con i lampioni spenti dalle 22, l’unica luce rimasta accesa sino alle 23 è stata la fotoelettrica che illumina il campanile.

L’immagine, di sicura suggestione, ci ricorda che anche in località  in cui il cielo notturno ha una qualità  molto buona, esistono casi in cui l’illuminazione può essere ottimizzata: nel caso specifico con un semplice intervento si potrebbe risparmiare energia, restringendo il flusso luminoso in modo da rischiarare solo la torre.

Oltre alle misure nei dintorni del paese, una parte del gruppo LoNNe ha eseguito anche rilievi lungo la strada del Belagaio, confermando l’eccellente qualità del cielo notturno in questo territorio, che rappresenta la porzione settentrionale di un’area che si estende dal basso senese, attraversando tutto l’entroterra maremmano e l’Amiata e che costituisce a oggi in Italia una delle tre zone più estese e con qualità del cielo notturno molto buone. In particolare, le misurazioni eseguite in località Belagaio-Casa Nova nella notte di domenica con tre strumenti indipendenti hanno dato letture sopra 22 mag/arcsec², che è un valore tra i più alti registrabili in assoluto.

L’incontro col pubblico

Nel pomeriggio di domenica 22, prima di avviare le misure, il gruppo LoNNe è stato invitato a un evento pubblico in cui ogni esperto si è presentato e ha condiviso con i partecipanti episodi significativi o curiosi del proprio percorso professionale. Le testimonianze raccolte hanno consentito al pubblico di conoscere le “vite parallele” di astronomi, ingegneri, divulgatori e gestori di parchi impegnati da anni nello studio del problema, e in attitivà di valorizzazione del territorio legate a un uso sostenibile della luce.

Prossimi passi della rete LoNNe

La rete Loss of the Night prosegue le attività sino all’ottobre 2016. Nelle riunioni tenute a Sesto Fiorentino al termine della campagna di misure, tra altre iniziative, che potrete seguire in inglese dal sito principale e in italiano tramite Attivarti.org, è stata abbozzata anche la prossima campagna di misure comparate si svolgerà  nel maggio 2016 nel parco astronomico di Mont Sec (Catalogna) .

La campagna di misure della rete Loss of the Night è finanziata nell’ambito del programma COST dell’Unione Europea (azione ES 1204).

Per approfondire il tema

Siete interessati a partecipare in prima persona alla misurazione della qualità  del cielo notturno nella vostra zona, o più in generale a approfondire il tema della tutela del cielo notturno tramite un’illuminazione sostenibile?

Potete contattare il progetto BuioMetria Partecipativa all’indirizzo buiometria@attivarti.org.

Ringraziamenti
Un grazie particolare va, come in occasione di altri eventi promossi da Attivarti.org in valle del Farma, alle comunità di Torniella e Piloni per il notevole supporto organizzativo, oltre che a Luciano Massetti dell’IBIMET.

Foto di Andreas Haenel, Zoltan Kollath, Andrea Giacomelli e Luciano Massetti. La mappa di brillanza del cielo notturno è di Cinzano, Falchi ed Elvidge (2001)

The friends who invited us in Pistoia proposed an Esperanto translation of one of our articles on “BuioMetria Partecipativa”. We always maintain a focus on languages and multi-culture, so we like these things!

Find the Italian-Esperanto translation: http://esperanto-grupo.it/pistoja/mallummezurado.html (kudos to Nicola Morandi)

“…sometimes you need to be “harsh” to make sure that the law is applied” said Leopoldo dalla Gassa, the President of VenetoStellato, a non-profit association which has been active for years in the topic of light pollution in the region of Veneto, in the North-East of Italy.

by Andrea Giacomelli

AG: Leopoldo, tell us how VenetoStellato was born

LdG: In 1997 in Veneto we had our first regional law on light pollution. At that stage, several activists from the stargazing community decided to get together and evaluate the opportunities in terms of protection of their observatories. Following a series of annual meetings, in April 2000 a regional steering committee was created, and it was called Veneto Stellato (Starry Veneto).
To date we have around forty subscribers, including people from stargazing and environmental associations, are well as academic researchers and individual citizens. The average age of our members is between 35 and 40.

AG: What is your distribution in the region?

LdG: At present we have a prevaling number of members in the provinces of Verona, Vicenza, and Padova, while a smaller number comes from the Rovigo and Treviso areas. On the other hand, we are missing members in the provinces of Belluno and Venezia. Possibly the communities in Belluno are affected by the fact of being spread in mountain locations, far from the plain.

AG: This year VenetoStellato decided to support a peculiar initiative, i.e. the shut-off of lighting in Asiago, a small town in the Nothern part of the Region: tell us more about how this went.

LdG: On March 28, in the new moon phase we took part in the controlled switch-off of the city of Asiago.

[NOTE: Asiago is a town with a population around 7000, located in a highland area North of Vicenza]

The area hosts the telescopes of the Padua branch of the National Astrophysics Institute and of the Padua University.

The request for the switch-off was made by the Regional Environmental Protection Agency (ARPAV), in coordination with our permanent observatory on light pollution. This entity, which also includes VenetoStellato, has been established pursuant to the law, in order to verify the compliance to the regulations.

The initiative had the objective of raising awareness on the issue of the dispersion of light at night towards a broad audience, and to verify the impact of public lighting on night sky brightness.
Our current legislation allows the switch-off of public lighting for no more than three days per year, and always insuring safety conditions.

A report about the event (in Italian) including the recorded measurements may be downloaded from the ARPAV site.

AG: How long was the event?

LdG: The switch-off was for all of the night on March 28. In practice, all public lights were out, except for some critical roundabouts.

AG: How did the residents react?

LdG: I would like to emphasize that there were no negative reactions to the switch-off. Interestingly, some groups (ordinary citizens, not experts), arranged observation groups to look at the sky from gardens and from the city centre, in order to appreciate how the starry sky used to be years back.

AG: VenetoStellato also collaborates with ARPAV in non-compliance reports. What is the process?

LdG: As stated in the regional law, VenetoStellato, is one of the organizations acknowledged as a partner to local municipalities, providing support and suggestions in the application of the regulations.
The same organizations have the authority to report cases of non-compliance in the installation of new luminaires, and can request the adaptation of public and private installations. ARPAV receives a copy of each report and will confirm the validity of the information provided.

AG: How many reports have you produced to date?

It is difficult to provide an accurate count. I would say over two thousand, as an under-estimate, considering both public and private installations.
You should consider that each report is referred to sites, so the actual number of luminaires that we contributed to bring to compliance will be in the range of several thousands.

AG: Which are the most frequent issues?

The types of luminaires which are normally on our radar are projectors and lighting towers, since these are very often in a condition of total violation of the law.
Last, but not least,we are verifying an increasing amount of billboards, especially around shopping malls, since these happen to be one of the major source of light pollution.

AG: VenetoStellato is now in its third year of participation to the CORDILIT network, with an array of SQM stations deployed in several of the amateur observatories managed by your affiliates. Have you noticed any trend in the data?

LdG: Indeed, we use the CORDILIT data to monitor sky night brightness, observing if our reports have some impact, and also for outreach purposes.
Concerning the actual detection of trends, in order to provide an appropriate feedback we are waiting for some cross-checks which are in the process of being made both by ARPAV and by the Padua University.
What we are noting is that there is a slight variation in the dark peaks in our data. Considering the Nove station, when we installed the SQM sensor in 2011 we were never exceeding 19.8 in terms of magnitude per square arc-second. In the last 6-8 months we are consistently exceeding 20, and made it to 20.21 as the darkest reading.
On average, we have gained 0.4 on the magnitude scale: who knows how many billions of lumen we have prevented from reaching the sky!

AG: What do you see as the main threat for the protection of the night sky in our area?

LdG: The main threat for us is the proliferation of LED installations. The regional law does not prohibit their use, nor does it provide a threshold for the color temperature of the diodes.
It is possible that, if LEDs with a relevant blue light component (i.e. the devices with a color temperature above 4000K) will be adopted, just considering the components due to reflection, the amount of light pollution will be much higher than the traditional sodium lamps.
For this reason we invite administrations to adopt LED lighting with color temperature not exceeding 3000K.

AG: Which are your expectations and your goals?

LdG: Our expectations in the North-East of Italy, and especially in Veneto, is that communities will finally appreciate the amount of energy wasted for improper lighting, and that citizens will decide to fully comply to the regulatory requirements.
It is not by accident that Italy happens to be, after Spain, one of the main consumers of elecrictiy for artificial lighting in Europe….this is a record that we would really love to lose.

AG: What’s your view on the scenario in the rest of Italy?

LdG: Sadly, in the rest of the Italian peninsula there are too few organizations that are actively engaging their administrations in order to apply the existing regulations, for those regions which decided to adopt laws on light pollution. In this condition, most of the actions are left to the good will of individuals, but this is too little to provide an impact in the short term.

AG: Is there a specific anecdote related to your activity that you would like to recall?

LdG: Well, sometimes you need to be “harsh” to make sure that the law is applied. We once had a case of a municipality refusing to apply the regulations in a case related to a private installation. At that point we had to escalate the issue to the public attorney, with the request to verify the possibility of negligence in the application of the law.

At that point, it took only a couple of days for the municipality to issue their request to bring the private installation into compliance. This case did have some local media coverage, and we then started using the articles which appeared in the press as a form of persuasion with counterparts which decide to take a
“tough” approach in the interaction with VenetoStellato. They should simply understand that acting against the law is useless, and will not pay.

All images are courtesy of VenetoStellato

Tidying up some papers, we noted that on June 9, 2008, the BuioMetria Partecipativa project had its first presentation to the public.

The birth was recorded (we had a videocamera) at the former Cinema Mori in Ribolla, Southern Tuscany, now hosting various civic facilities for the Municipality of Roccastrada, in addition to being one of the entry points to the Tuscan Mining Geopark.

The even had national visibility: Francesco Giubbilini, who gave the presentation, was interviewed by RAI Radio Due, and this started the participatory process which today sees the project still committed in the collection of measurements, awareness raising actions, and more issues presented through the buiometriapartecipativa.org and attivarti.org sites.

An informal recollection of what was going on in that season is available in the “brief history of BMP”, a work in progress started by pibinko in 2012, and you may check the June 2008 episode in English or Italian)

With the publication of a first semester report due in a few weeks, today we liked the idea of remembering the June 9 2008 event and to share this with you.

EDITORIAL NOTE: This is the first of a series of interviews by Andrea Giacomelli to experts in the field of artificial light at night. The idea of the interviews was initially proposed by Andrea as one of the dissemination actions in the context of the Loss of the Night Network. It is in any case open to any expert from any project or community.

Estefanía Cañavate García is an officer working for the Andalusian environmental agency.

AG: Estefanía, What is your role within the Agency?

ECG: I am a technician specializing in light pollution. I work in the Environmental Quality Data Center of Environmental and Water Agency of Andalusia. It is a public organization belonging to the Regional Government of Andalusia.
Since when have you been personally involved in light pollution?
I have been working on light pollution since 2006. One of my main projects, was when I worked on creating a regulation regarding the protection of the quality of the night sky against light pollution. Currently, I offer technical support and help with the implementation of regulation.

AG: How many staff are currently involved in the agency on light pollution?

ECG: We are a team consisting of four technical specialists in this field.

AG: Your Agency is involved in training courses directed to ligthing technicians in public administrations. Could you explain how this activity works, and what is its outcome?

ECG: One of the main objectives of the Regional Government is to guarantee the application of the Decree on light pollution. For this reason we are providing Andalusia´s city councils with the necessary technical support to implement it. Our work focuses on four aspects: zoning the territory of the municipalities, staff training, provision of guidelines regarding the regulation, and management of pilot experiences.
To give an idea of the scale of our operation, in 2011 we held eight sub-regional technical workshops aimed at technicians and municipal representatives. As a result of that we trained more than 1000 technicians, in a region composed by 771 municipalities.
One of the most critical issues in training municipal representatives is related to light colour. Energy saving criteria in outdoor lighting, if considered indepedently, lean towards the use of lamps with maximum efficiency, that is, those emitting more light with a lower consumption of electricity. In this respect, LED technology may offer the main opportunity for energy saving. However, as of today, the most energy-efficient LEDs are those emitting larger quantities of blue light, and this -compared to other sources of artificial light- is more harmful from the environmental point of view.
The Andalusian regulation restricts white LEDs in the zones with a higher protection level (defined as E1 and E2 by the regulation).
One of our actions is, thus, to suggest alternatives to the municipal representatives, such as several technological solutions offering high energy efficiency as well as light with a colour respectful of the environment. The market already offers LEDs with yellow hues, giving both an acceptable energy efficiency -albeit lower than white LEDs or than other consolidated technologies- and a light which is more respectful towards the environment.

While the issues related to colour temperature are not always acknowledged by the technicians we meet, we also found cases in which the municipal representatives are very aware this item. An example is the municipality of Almeria, where the Calar Alto astronomical observatory is located. In this case we found that the Mayor has been testing lighting with monochr

Starting from today (Oct. 22, 2012) I will be adding to the “traditional” branobag posts a limited series of blog posta about a brief history of the BuioMetria Partecipativa (or “participatory night sky quality monitoring from Italy).

For those of you who don’t yet know it: what is buiometria partecipativa ? It is an international project, started in Spring 2008, to raise awareness on the issue of light pollution (and on its solutions) and, in parallel, it is an international participatory environmental monitoring project.

For those of you who know it enough: did you ever ask yourself what is the BuioMetria Partecipativa, BEYOND what it represents to newcomers ?

The aim of this short series of blog posts is not to answer this question, but to share with the a wider group of people a common picture about this initiative.

The common picture will be drawn using two different sets of colors. On one side, I will be creatig a summary of the main “episodes” of the BuioMetria Partecipativa project. This is useful, becaus the official project site has now so much information that some form of “unofficial” summary can help to make sense of the official project sources. On the other side, I will be adding considerations and anecdotes which will never be published officially, but which I have always liked the idea of sharing, as one of the two authors of the project.

Once all of this body of knowledge (or should I say “body of experience”) has been shared, and this will not take long, maybe some of you will want to attempt an answer to the “BEYOND” question made above. As for me, I found a clear answer a little more than one month ago, after over four years of very strong commitment to the project…so don’t expect me to blurt it out right now on any minor blog…

To follow the brief history of participatory night sky monitoring from Italy (BSD-BMP, coming from Breve Storia Della BuioMetria Partecipativa), tune into this blog daily, or follow the posts classified under the  BSDBMP category.

There is no plan carved in stone, but I would like to get to a point before November 22, 2012, just to avoid more allegations of diverging on anything I tell.

OTHER IMPORTANT DETAILS

• this blog thread is not an official document of the BuioMetria Partecipativa project. All and any official documentation of the project is available on the official project site, and is published by the non-profit association Attivarti.org
• All the brief story of participatory night sky monitoring from Italy is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Should you be interested to re-use either material from the BMP project, or material from this brief history, and are not well-acquainted with Creative Commons, please contact me.
• The original “Brief History” is published in Italian. In am anyway making an effort in translating this in parallel to English, since it is not “just” an Italian case.
• for any comment/proposal/note, please write to the Author of the Brief History: Andrea Giacomelli aka pibinko –  info@pibinko.org.

Thank you for your attention, and enjoy

CREDITS

Il logo della BuioMetria Partecipativa è opera di Anne Ghisla

Brief history of BuioMetria Partecipativa by Andrea Giacomelli (pibinko) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

IF YOU ARE IN A HURRY

Whoever may be interested in elaborating on possible solutions on the mitigation of consequences deriving from light pollution:

1. give ten minutes of his/her time to the http://www.pibinko.org/buiometria-partecipativa/
2. then write to info@pibinko.org for more information (not on buiometriapartecipativa project, but on the mitigation solutions).

Thank you, and have a nice week-end

IF, ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU HAVE MORE TIME AND A CUP OF TEA

A) On October 9, 2012,  the Italian government proposed on a new law for cost containment (the so called stability law). In addition to “typical” issues such as income or value added taxation, the law proposed a different action item, called “operazione cieli bui” (operation “dark skies”)

For years I have been following very closely, and in collaboration with other experts, the light pollution issue in Italy, and partly abroad, and the past two weeks have felt like a fresh breeze to me.

B) The law proposes the reduction of public lighting, though measures such as the reduction of the power and number of luminaires, and  of the number of hours of operation. According to the experts who provided the initial input data for the law,  this should lead to savings in the range of 500-1000 MEuro per year in Italy.

The contents of the “operazione cieli bui” has triggered in the public and in various opinion makers an extremely diverse chain of reactions, mostly having in common a defensive modus operandi.

We have seen statements such as “Well, it is true that our core business is energy, but we this part of the law is irrelevant to us“, or even people saying that the decrease of light in cities will lead to more crime, more depression, less trust in the future and in the possibility of a recovery for our country, etc.

Such reactions are all generally understandable and justifiable, with an appropriate analysis effort.

C) On the other hand, we have the community of experts and citizen interest groups which for years have been studying and working in sectors related to light pollution. In principle these subjects are more prepared in evaluating the technical and legislative implications of the issue, in addition to having an updated state-of-the-art vision. One would expect this community to be able to respond in a consistent and balanced way to any comment or critique.

However, for the moment (we are now some ten days in the public debate) this has not been happening.

Knowing personally various experts (lighting engineers, architects, stargazers, astronomers, land planners and environmental monitoring folks) which for years have been operating in a very “linear” approach in their mission on light pollution, something new happened.

The voices of people which for years (some since the past century) have given time, energy and money to conduct activities in research, educational, awareness raising and lobbying for regional laws are for some reason responding in different ways to the reactions of the general public on the “operazione cieli bui”

D) To connotate such responses with reference to light, we might say that there has been feedback corresponding to any part of the electromagnetic spectrum…from red to blue…

• in green (for hope) the jubilation of the experts which, after years of commitment (both as volunteers and as professionals), have managed to bring to the attention of the nation a real environmental issue, together with a possible solution.
• in red (as fire) raging reactions, especially in response to press and TV flack arguing about the validity of the measures proposed by the government (supported in this by some light pollution experts)
• in a cool blue…very few people. There have been very few individuals remaining calm once they acknowledged the magnitude of a law which could contribute to mitigate light pollution, reduce the electricity bill of the nation, and reasonably generate a stream of additional revenue in the process.
• strangely (and with no color): facing a very real and substantial fact (i.e. the new law), we have also observed the silence of some subjects which in the past couple of years were proposing themselves as national players in the arena of light pollution…for the moment they have not spoken (or have done so with insufficient energy to be heard)..wasn’t light pollution mitigation one of the big causes in your life ? Ok…no big deal…and possibly some of them have serious reasons for not speaking up yet (e.g. family issues, long-term travel in remote locations, etc.).

E) In the sum of “energy exchanges” deriving from diverse opinions, the current result, as observed standing just outside the playground is almost funny: you will note a whole group of stakeholders which, for different reasons, are feeling gloomier.

Some of them now fear that the “operazione cieli bui” will work too well. Some others fear that the operation may be twisted or diminished with respect to the initial layout which they provided to the government.

There are people fearing the loss of “something” deriving from having “less light”. Other people fear the loss of “something” by maintaining “more light”.

At the end of the day, lots of people I read about or I know are saying they will feel gloomier, whichever way things go, just because they don’t accept that things can go a little differently compared to their expectations.

F) For those of you who are less acquainted with electromagnetism: remember that, in addition to “the light which makes us see colours” (the so called “visible” part of the spectrum), there are also parts of light which our eyes cannot see…on one side we have infrared (e.g. used in remote controls), on the other hand, we have ultraviolet (for which you like to have sun-screening creams).

Interestingly, if you have the right gear, your eyes can be helped to “see” infrared, and if you don’t have the right protection you will surely experience the effect of UVa and UVb rays

…if you like the idea, we want to invite you to a week-end outing in a theme park about light and its relation to the night sky.

The theme park is called BuioMetria Partecipativa (we might translate this as “participatory darkness-o-metry”…the word buiometria does not exist in Italian dictionaries), and it is open since June 2008.

This proposal is not academic nor vague. There are people who, for almost five years, have been periodically visiting the “theme park” of one of the main projects currently active worldwide on awareness raising and crowdsourcing of night sky quality data (strictly related to light pollution data). With this experience, they have found precious suggestions to “read” parts of the story which are not always immediately visible.

Not only that: for over two years now, in addition to analyze and measure the light pollution issue, some of these people have started to operate “on the field”. This has led initially to a combination of activities which in Italy are called “social promotion” (with a specific law on this). In a few months, the same line of action has also crossed actual jobs.

…and, for some reason, if we occasionally meet people who are feeling gloomy about their situation, we often find that the same people can actually bring back to their lives a little light…sometimes also saving electricity.

H Would you like to know more ? This post is already too long. More (and more explicit) posts will follow. If these posts are not sufficient, or if they don’t come if a pace that is appropriate for you, please write to  info@pibinko.org

Thank you, and have a nice week-end!