ILPAC News

Hi,

This mail went to the ilpac list yesterday ( 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
star.arm.ac.uk/darksky/armagh.html , and Mark Stronges dark skies 4
NI page is www.darkskies4ni.co.uk/

* We have put together publicity leaflet, aimed mainly at astronomy folks, at 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, 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

Two quick questions:

Is the mailing list up and running?

Any chance of getting some medja coverage? If TV3 will allow Astronomy & Space to get some free advertising on their breakfast show, surely they'll allow a non-profit organisation some air-time. Be worth checking out.

Two quick questions:

Is the mailing list up and running?

Any chance of getting some medja coverage? If TV3 will allow Astronomy & Space to get some free advertising on their breakfast show, surely they'll allow a non-profit organisation some air-time. Be worth checking out.

yep and yep.

I've just been far too busy since Whirlpool to get any media stuff together. Give me a few weeks...

Cheers,
~Al

Hi all,

Hope you all had a good Christmas, and best wishes for the New Year!

Recently we have had some enguires from people about light pollution near
major roads. For the most part the NRA appears to doing a reasonable job in
installing FCO flat glass lighting fixtures in rural areas, though this is
done on a case by case basis and they have no policy to use this type of
lighting exclusivly. We have written to the Environmental Manager of the
NRA asking that they use FCO's for all fixtures, a copy of the letter can
be found here groups.yahoo.com/group/ilpac/files/ilpac-nra.pdf it
will be on the website soon also.

If there are any of you living near road developments or proposed road
develeopments please contact the development office to see what lighting
fixtures they propose to use. Drop us a mail if you need any more data or
want to discus a submission before sending it on. The list address is
ilpac@yahoogroups.com and if you just want to contact the committee (such
as it is!) mail ilpac@irishastronomy.org

Also if writing to the NRA about a local road has got your interest then
please consider adding yourself to the almost empty list of contact people
we have at a local level -
www.irishastronomy.org/~ilpac/councils.html We really need people
working at local/county level as its up to the County Council to decide on
street lighting policy.

Some of us will be attending the Connaught Star Party on January 24th in
Galway ( homepage.tinet.ie/~galwayastronomyclub/ ), we may even have a
stand set up! so do say hello if youre there.

The Christmas break also has given us time to write some articles. They are
mainly geared at the Astronomy audience and hopefully will be appearing in
Astronomy club magazines (and the Irish Times courtesy of Colm) in the
coming months. We will put these on the website soon also. If you have
contacts with other magazones that you think may be of interst in writing a
piece then please let us know and we will put something appropriate together.

Thats all for now. Please send on any thoughts/comments/abuse you have!

Cheers,
~Al
--
Deputy Chairperson,
Irish Light Pollution Awareness Campaign - www.irishastronomy.org/ilpac
Irish Section of the International Dark Sky Association - www.darksky.org