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Campaign for Dark Skies (CfDS)

Local Astronomy Group

Page updated - 12 February 2006

 

The Background

Light pollution affects affects everyone.  Whether it be a neighbour’s security light shining in your bedroom window when you’re trying to sleep or the “nuclear” orange glow of our towns and cities at night. It hasn’t always been that way. Light pollution really came to the fore in the later years of the 20th century. Poor street lighting in some of our towns and cities means that residents, including the wildlife, live in almost 24 hour daylight conditions. This affects the day-night feeding, mating and living patterns of countless species and robs the human inhabitants of the chance to see the beauty of the night sky.

 

The Campaign

The British Astronomical Association’s Campaign for Dark Skies is committed to better lighting for our towns and cities, directed to where it’s needed not into the surrounding environment. The Campaign for Dark Skies (CfDS) aims to preserve and restore the beauty of the night sky by campaigning against excessive, inefficient and irresponsible lighting that shines where it is not wanted nor needed. We believe that light should only shine where it is needed and wanted, and no-where else. Doing so is both easy and cost-effective - and with significant health and safety benefits.

Much wasted light shines up into the sky, causing the visual orange ‘smog’ that hangs over towns and cities at night, intruding into the countryside, and destroying our view of a star-lit sky. This Light Pollution is a visible and needless waste of resources, which contributes to global warming - hundreds of millions of pounds worth of electricity is wasted each year in the UK alone through poor lighting.

 

Contacts

I live in Great Cornard and have recently been appointed as the local representative for the Campaign for Dark Skies. If anyone has any local light pollution issues, I can be contacted via email - email Andy Bowes  - or visit the The Campaign for Dark Skies area of British Astronomical Association website.

 

Andy Bowes – Local Amateur Astronomer