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During this evening's Flamsteed Great Equatorial event, hosted by the always awesome Brendan, he mentioned something about his borough going through a trial period of having the street lights switched off (for cost saving reasons). So upon reaching home, I embarked on an investigative jour...alright I googled "street light trials" and found these two county gov websites giving exact street locations of switch off, all marked out on maps. Kent have their streetlight locations nicely marked out on a zoomable google map whereas Essex have theirs in several pdf maps for each area.
Kent:
Essex:
I dont know of any other county doing this. Now I dont really know if this is of any use to us astronomers as looking at the map, it seems sporadic, although there are large concentrated patches of total street light switch offs. I dont think the problem from an astronomer perspective is really about being on a dark street as the skies would still be lit up by the surrounding cities but of course any astronomer residents living in a trial street, would certainly benefit a little.
I dont actually support street light switch offs despite the fact they are a huge pain in the neck for my home astronomy endeavours. But safety has to come first, regardless of the passion of my hobby...having said that, if my street lights switched off, well I might as well make bloody good use of it!
What we really need, to beneficially serve cost effectiveness, environment, us astronomers and public safety is to have all of our streets have directional lighting. One of you had told me about this and I really like that idea (not sure if it was Brian or Mike or someone else).
Posted : 02/12/2015 1:03 am
Kent have their streetlight locations nicely marked out on a zoomable google map
Great find, Tej... that's really useful.
But safety has to come first, regardless of the passion of my hobby…
I agree... but the question is, is it safer to have street lights? I think you need to look at the evidence, and there is plenty of evidence out there that street lighting has no impact at all on crime or road casualties. See this recent study: http://jech.bmj.com/content/69/11/1118 .
To quote their conclusions:
This study found little evidence of harmful effects of switch off, part-night lighting, dimming, or changes to white light/LEDs on road collisions or crime in England and Wales.
So, if street lights are not preventing crime or accidents, what are they for? I think this is more about our perception of safety, and our natural fear of the dark.
Posted : 02/12/2015 8:11 am
I have an interesting take on this. For the last 15 years we have had a holiday home in France (sadly just sold this year). It had great skies and one of our French visitors told us the tale of a friend who lived in the nearby town of Cahors. He too was a keen amateur astronomer and was unhappy to discover that the town council had erected a street light outside his house. So he complained to the Maire of Cahors that this light was impeding his view of the universe. A short while later the local council installed a switch on the street light allowing him to view the universe unimpeded. The council did ask him to make sure he switched the light back on when he had finished his observing session!
Posted : 02/12/2015 9:28 am
A short while later the local council installed a switch on the street light allowing him to view the universe unimpeded. The council did ask him to make sure he switched the light back on when he had finished his observing session!
A light switch on a street light! Fantastic idea! Clearly a very enlightened maire! (Yellow card...)
Posted : 02/12/2015 9:51 am
A light switch on a street light! Fantastic idea!
Absolutely... superb idea.
There are, of course, other methods (not that I endorse this at all, of course 😉 ):
Posted : 02/12/2015 10:00 am
I prefer the Albus Dumbledore 'deluminator' approach.
Posted : 02/12/2015 10:41 am
