Sydney Dark Sky Project

[Radar]

I heard on the radio today that Sydney will be turning off their streetlights on the 31st of March 2007 to promote reducing greenhouse emissions.

I think this would be a great opportunity for City Slickers to see a starry sky.

The timing of it is not the best, full moon the the 2nd April means that the Sydney siders will not be able to view a very good sky. But it will still be 50 times better than what they are used to.

[Tenacious Del]

This is awesome. They are doing something like this in Rome and England as well. But not for greenhouse emissions, to reduce light pollution. Even though cities are getting bigger and brighter, there is a conservation ethic these days which I think will see light pollution be reduced rather than increased.

[Radar]

Street lights don't need to be on all night. It is ridiculous and a waste of energy. A much better solution would be sensor streetlights, so that an entire street is not lit up for nothing all night. This would also be better security, because it would make it hard for graffiti vandals, burglars etc, to move up and down a street without giving themselves away. The way things are at the moment, I can go out the front of my house, but I have no indication if someone was in the area in the last minute because the lights are on all the time. Sensor lights convey this information and would pay for themselves by the much smaller amount of power they use.

[CanisMajorTom]

I'll keep my fingers crossed. This would be awesome if governments started recognizing that the night sky should be preserved just like any other natural wonder.

[rocketman]

Did you realize that sydney is actually an intrinsically good dark site? The bowl shape stabilizes the atmosphere above. Pity about the monstrous light polluting city. Near the coast where we reside,the ocean sometimes helps. We occasionally can see a bit of the milky way haze from Bondi. Recently, to my surprise, we could easily see the dust lanes in eta carina nebula naked eye even with my old crappy eyes! The earth hour seemed to make little difference to the seeing conditions-street lights were still on. Went to a local park with a big view over the city(showed the wife some of the better objects with the big fujinon binos)- no difference noted at lights out time, so went home and did better saturday night activities.:thumbsupmate:

[Radar]

Hi Rocketman, wished they did these things over a new moon. I think if the city slickers saw a nice dark sky, it may encourage them to turn off their lights more.

[Maia]

This all reminds me of an incident in my street,that happened about 2-3 years ago.The street light out front of our house 'blew',or was smashed by vandals.I recall it made a great difference to the 'seeing' of the sky in that direction.It was short lived when I went outside one night to see it'd been repaired!

Anyway,aside from all that,Radars' right,it's a waste of energy.