Lights out
Very cool idea -- the city of Sydney Australia is turning out the lights this weekend so that urban dwellers can see the stars.
From
CBC News
Lights out for Sydney this weekend
The Australian city of Sydney is switching off many lights in its harbour area this weekend to let people have a better view of the stars.
Astronomers are applauding the plan to douse floodlights on Sydney's famous Harbour Bridge as well as lights in some downtown office buildings. The request came from the Sydney Observatory.
Warrick Couch, a professor at the University of New South Wales, said he would like to see more "lights-out" events in the future.
"We're just suggesting that this is something we should do more often, because people who live in the city miss out on seeing a lot in the sky each night," he said.
Light pollution is a very important thing for astronomers. The big scopes of yesteryear such as Mt. Palomar are now useful only for teaching because the cities have grown up so much around them.
Jen and I had the pleasure of visiting the
observatories at Mauna Kea in Hawai'i -- it was interesting driving around Hilo at night because they use low-pressure Sodium lights for streetlights. These are very easily filtered out at the scope where the standard high-pressure mercury lights are almost impossible to counteract.
Posted by DaveH at June 19, 2005 2:58 PM