We always like the idea of the participants to our “BuioMetria Partecipativa” project to let them know about ourselves. Here is Stefano Cidone with two of his fellow stargazers, from Crucoli Torretta, in Calabria, deep in the South:
Yeserday I had the onus and bonus of having the first talk at the opening ceremony of the Ninth Parco Nord Milano Biodiversity Festival.
The location was the brand new Interactive Cinema Museum in Milano, viale Fulvio Testi 121.
I spent some twenty years of my life in Milano, in various phases, and I’ve been roaming in the city quite a lot, not to mention the m(‘)appare project.
Now that I am spending more time in hamlets on the Tuscan hills, than in urban sprawls, I’m starting to lose my bearings.
I was confusing the old tobacco factory with the building at the Viale Zara/viale Marche intersection, so I thought I could walk from the bus 90 stop in viale Zara. After 30 seconds I considered asking three bus drivers who were having a smoke between shifts. They kindly explained that my destination was in fact two miles, rather than 200 yards, away, and invited my to take the new Lilac metro line.
I finally found the museum. After some greetings, the event started with the institutional remarks by the Park Management and the mayors of the three municipalities related to the park (Cormano, Bresso, and Sesto S. Giovanni). Then we were off with the expert talks.
I spoke about “measuring night sky quality, and sharing its value“, which in Italian could be also said as “BuioMetria Partecipativa”, but sound a bit more institutional.
In addition to the usual bird’s eye view on light, night sky, and citizen science activities, yesterday was a good opportunity to share the case of lighting revamping in Milano, with the quasi-instantaneous transition to LED in most of the city, driven by the EXPO works. This case is very well shown from International Space Station imagery, and was recently advertised by Alejandro Sanchez, an astronmer with whom we collaborate in the Loss of the Night Network. From the Loss of the Night Network I also recalled the recent recommendations about the use of light at night , with a focus on direction, blue componet of light, colour temperature, and illuminance levels.
The session was moderated by Marina Carpineti and Mario Zannoni, University of Milano.
It was a pleasant afternoon, where I learned some new things, refreshed some old ones, and provided some insight to others on the topice I was presenting.
The closing was with an aperitivo based on “wilderness food”. A very, very milanese situation ;)
Unico peccato: non aver potuto esplorare meglio il museo, almeno negli scorci.
After the aperitivo, the Museum was showing “Il ragazzo invisibile”. However I was up and about since the break of dawn and with no siesta. Considering two heavy days ahead at Parco Nord, for the BuioMetria Partecipativa demonstrations, I considered making my way back to base camp, not without taking a stroll at l’Isola, where all the story started in 2006.
Waiting for the official photo coverage, here is a shot with the Mayor of Cormano greeting the audience with the backdrop of the last slide of my presentation, with the acknowledgments, the map of night sky quality, contact information, a panoramic view of the Farma Valley and the pointing arrow saying “we are here”.
The meeting, held at the Civic Centre of Ribolla, a former mining village in Southern Tuscany, was attended by about 15 people, including the presence of the administrators from the Municipality of Roccastrada. Some of the citizens and public authorities who previously expressed their interest in participating then wrote they could not come and apologised.
Summing it all up, the attendance was not so bad, considering it was a sunny Tuesday morning at the beginning of September.
The event was opened by Emiliano Rabazzi, Municipal Councillor of Roccastrada. Mr. Rabazzi brought the greetings of the local Administration and emphasized the value of the subject of the day for his Municipality and for all of the surrounding areas.
Andrea Giacomelli then explained the opportunity related to the Biodiversity Festival at Parco Nord in Milan.
He then switched to “calendar mode” and briefly recalled Attivarti.org’s milestones over the current year.
He also showed that the association’s activities related to night sky quality protection and promotion must be inserted in a context full of projects linked to environmental engineering and land planning which started in 1994. The Participatory Night Sky Quality Monitoring (Buiometria Partecipativa – BMP) is currently the most mature initiative, but not the only one in progress, and surely not the only one in a composite track record.
Some examples were given, including:
He also briefly described the working group who developed these initiatives, composed by people coming both from a “theoretical” world, as well as very practical down-to-earth experts (who are equally and often even more qualified than those trained in school).
Mr. Giacomelli then offered a new version of the presentation on dark sky protection and promotion. Following a format which has been used on average once a month since 2008, with events from Matera, in Southern Italy, to Edinburgh, Scotland, he gave an overview of the issue of light pollution in terms of causes, effects and solutions.
With respect to past editions of the presentation, a specific focus was give to three topics:
1. LEDs, sharing the recommendations about colour temperature and blue light developed by the Loss of the Night European research network (for which Attivarti.org is the main representative in Italy);
2. The Tuscan Regional Master plan for Energy and Environment (PAER, Piano Ambientale Energetico Regionale), which acknowledged some of the observations proposed by Attivarti.org during the public consultation phase. As far as the Tuscan Region is concerned, at this point we may find on page 118 of the document a reference to “night sky as a resource”, and other references relating to this topic, all proposed by Attivarti.org;
3. A brief assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats from the standpoint of night sky promotion in Southern Tuscany.
Finally, Federico Giussani, collaborating with Andrea Giacomelli since last year, proposed the video he edited with some of the shots presented at the Toscana Foto Festival 2015 exhibition in July, arousing significant interest by the audience.
The presentation was closed by the TV report made in 2010 by TG2 (the News at one by the second national public channel).
The meeting was opened at 10.50 a.m. and ended AT 12.15.
Photo credits:
Translation credits: Alessia Carrara – Post-translation adaptation Andrea Giacomelli
This is an interview for Radio Popolare Milano made in preparation for the BuioMetria Partecipativa outreach event on July, 30, 2015 in Milano.
The talk recalls ideas on participatory open mapping, emerging issues with high color temperature LEDs, tasting tasty products from Southern Tuscany, and other stories related to night sky quality.
Listen to the audio (in Italian, 24.7 Mb)
Thanks again to Macondo for hosting us!
This is the only August event for the BuioMetria Partecipativa project.
Three Sky Quality Metres from the Attivarti.org instrument pool will be made available to experienced or apprentice citizen scientists, in order to take measurements of skyglow in one of the darkest areas in Italy, South of Siena, and integrating existing measurements collected since 2008.
The event is mostly targeted to Italian tourists and residents, but if you like the idea of participating and mixing with the locals, you are more than welcome.
Please send an e-mail to mappare@attivarti.org, and we will be glad to give you more information.
In case of rain or cloud cover the event will be reconfigured for indoor activities, with presentations, stories from Southern Tuscany and more interesting anecdotes, all with a bottle of your favourite drink.
The event is organized by Attivarti.org
Below a video edited by Federico Giussani with some of the shots he proposed in the exhibition “…and thence we came out, and saw again the stars” at the Toscana Foto Festival
The video was shown for the first time during the evening about mapp(ear)ing the upper half of the landscape on July 16, 2015.
At the end of the presentation, the two authors had the opportunity of taking some night shots and measurements of night sky quality, both in town (on the right a shot in the lawn in front of the Gaetano Badii library in Massa Marittima) as well as in the countryside (Agriturismo Tesorino, between Massa Marittima and Follonica) with a reading of 20.99 mag/arcsec^2 around midnight, and with the Milky Way well in sight.
The video proposes some of the images from the exhibition, with various types of postproduction.
The photo exhibition will be at the Chiostro di S. Agostino, in Massa Marittima, until August 9 2015.
For more information: mappare@attivarti.org
An evening to think about light, sipping a glass of wine, “between stars and stables”
By Attivarti.org, the mapp(ear)ing association
Download the flyer, in Italian, in PDF format (480 Kb)
In Italian there is an expression…at times we say of something or someone going “dalle stelle alle stalle” (from stars to stables), referring to a case which gets worse, or “dalle stalle alle stelle” (from stables to stars) when things get incredibly better.
The subtitle for this Attivarti.org evening is not easily translated into English, nevertheless, for this evening we made an exercise in considering the relationship between the possibility of observing stars and stables, which increases when you move from the city to rural areas.
This will trigger further thoughts on the sens of artificial light at night.
Join us on Thursday, July 30, from 10PM to midnight at the LO-FI club in Milano, Italy (via dei Pestagalli, close to the Rogoredo train station).
LO-FI Milano is more known to music fans in Italy for garage, punk, rock and metal gigs. In the July 30 evening the soundtrack will not be neglected, with a dedicated soft playlist by DJ Elyoh and Omonimo, but the core of the event will be in the images and in the experience:
To keep people awake during the presentation of many night scenes, we will propose a game. The winner will get some tasty product from Southern Tuscany, and maybe a LED lamp with the “right” color temperature.
The event is managed by Attivarti.org with the LO-FI club. Attivarti.org, in addition to promoting since 2008 the BuioMetria Partecipativa project, is since 2013 one of the contact points in Italy for the Loss of the Night Network. This has engaged around 38 organizations (in 16 countries), all committed to research, technology transfer, and dissemination on the topic of artificial light at night.
Entrance is for ARCI members (you can easily get a membership card in any ARCI club in Italy, including the LO-FI itself, prior to the event). Admittance is free, and you may donate any amount to support the 2015 Attivarti.org operations
For more information: Andrea Giacomelli – mappare@attivarti.org
The Municipality of Grosseto recently initiated a participatory process to identify with citizens and other stakeholders, projects to be proposed as a part of its 2016 budget. In particular, the projects should be related to tourism (see official Comune di Grosseto web site).
[TO BE TRANSLATED]
La BuioMetria Partecipativa (e il gruppo di promozione sociale attualmente noto come Attivarti.org) nel territorio di Grosseto
Pur non avendo sede a Grosseto, Attivarti.org ha svolto diversi eventi sul territorio, e sin dal 2008 ha proposto la BuioMetria Partecipativa nel Comune. Di seguito un elenco degli eventi.
Nota: In corsivo sono indicati gli eventi che non avevano come tema portante la BuioMetria Partecipativa, ma che comunque hanno costituito una presenza del gruppo di lavoro Attivarti.org sul territorio. Una delle caratteristiche di Attivarti.org è in effetti quella di portare avanti in modo intrecciato tematiche relative a Cultura, Ambiente e Innovazione libera (si veda come ultima sintesi http://www.attivarti.org/cail2012).
Attivarti.org e il progetto “Grosseto Partecipa”
Attivarti.org ha voluto partecipare alla prima serie di incontri di “Grosseto Partecipa”. Per esigenze organizzative, è capitato di partecipare all’incontro di Roselle. Uno qualsiasi degli altri incontri sarebbe andato bene.
La proposta progettuale, che ha suscitato l’interesse sia del tavolo di cittadini in cui è stata inizialmente condivisa, che successivamente da parte dei facilitatori dell’incontro, è la presente:
Oltre al progetto legato alla BuioMetria Partecipativa, l’incontro è stato l’occasione per confrontarsi con i residenti su altre problematiche e spunti di interesse legati alle frazioni di Roselle, Istia e Batignano. Su queste ci si è potuti confrontare nel merito, date le competenze di pianificazione territoriale e di iniziative di promozione e valorizzazione portate avanti da anni, anche in ambito professionale da chi rappresentava Attivarti.org in questa sede.
Prossimi passi
1. Vi invitiamo a partecipare agli eventi in cui si parlerà di BuioMetria Partecipativa e, più in generale, di tutela e valorizzazione dell’altra metà del paesaggio.
2.Vi invitiamo a rivedere i siti www.attivarti.org e http://www.pibinko.org/buiometria-partecipativa/ per spunti che potrebbero, secondo voi, arricchire la descrizione del progetto su Grosseto.
In particolare segnaliamo
2.1. Le sezioni del Piano Ambientale ed Energetico della Regione Toscana, in cui si fa riferimento a questioni di cielo notturno (derivanti da osservazioni presentate da Attivarti.org nella fase di consultazione pubblica del Piano). Si vedano in particolare le pagine pag 42, 65, 88, 91, 118 del documento pubblicato dalla Regione nel febbraio 2015
2.2. Le tre linee guida proposte dalla rete Europea Loss of the Night, che Attivarti.org rappresenta in Italia assieme all’Istituto di Biometeorologia del CNR (sede di Sesto F.no) in tema di illuminazione artificiale notturna.
3. Ultimo, ma non ultimo, potete direttamente diventare “buiometristi” e partecipare in prima persona alla campagna di misure che Attivarti.org porta avanti su scala nazionale. Prendendo in prestito uno dei nostri stumenti, potrete misurare la qualità del cielo notturno a Grosseto e dintorni e -condividendo le misure eseguite- integrare la mappa esistente, di cui riportiamo un esempio e che potete consultare anche in versione dinamica tramite web-GIS.
