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Cathedral near Observatory
Dear Dr. Stavinschi,
I got your message on plan to erect a cathedral near your observatory in a
large Bucharest park just today and I'm in a hurry to prepare a lecture on
Czech (or just Moravian) situation and research results for tomorrow 8.
Passivhaustagung in Krems, Austria (http://www.passivhaustagung.at). So, I
write just a couple of remarks which could be of some use to you
(I publish them in my letter archive
http://amper.ped.muni.cz/jenik/letters/public too).
Allowing any new building inside a park in a city is a dangerous (giving a
bad precedent) and anti-environmental step -- providing that no new park
area of a larger size is created in the same time, instead of a paved area
or of existing buildings.
I'd stress that if a new building is to be erected inside a park, then the
goal should be to include it softly in the nature-near environment, with
the least possible damage to the existing environmental qualities which
exist there. Natural darkness at night is one of the several key ones (or
as natural as possible, very probably the darkness in the park around you
is diluted a lot already). Of course, the building activities themselves
present a disturbance and should be planned and made to have a
least-damaging impact.
It's a good idea for a park to have no artificial lighting at all. Our
observatory in Brno, Czechia has such a small unlit park area around it
since its erection in 1954. It's a true blessing. It's one of very few
islands within Brno from where people can admire most of the night sky
without being disabled by glare from very near or very strong lamps. And
probably the safest park in Brno: darkness provides security, contrary to
the popular superstition.
The current habit of illuminating so many buildings and monuments, all
evenings or even all nights long, is a serious disease. I've posted a
message on that recently to the Outdoor Lighting Forum, see a copy
Re: A monumental lighting task
URL: http://amper.ped.muni.cz/jenik/letters/public/msg00137.html
with further hyper-references in it.
Especially for churches, their lighting is something what should all
Christians understand (after thinking about it sufficiently) as truly
blasphemous. Night and darkness are a necessity for meditation. Darkness
and twilight are important attributes of orthodox ceremony, as far as I've
noticed. The towers of any church point toward heavens: of course, toward
the magnificent starry heavens, a very symbol of the God's glory (in
catholic churches at least, stars are sometimes painted on their domes
from inside... surely with some purpose). Anything what distracts the
attention from the starry heavens (a God's creature) towards the church
itself could and should be understood as a nuisance. It puts forward a
false object of worship, a modern sort of a Golden Calf.
I've seen the Czech landscape by night from a low-flying air-plane last
year (it was an inspection flight for checking the function of the red
lights on towers, chimneys etc., made by the civil aviation service). The
most prominent objects on the ground have been the luminaires, shining in
vain upwards (over 95 % of them). Churches have been visible of course, as
all the landscape. The only places where they had been almost invisible
were those, where glaring super-bright mouths of reflectors appeared -- of
reflectors illuminating the churches. Due to such (bad) illumination,
these churches disappear from the bird's (or God's) perspective! One can
just say: there is a horribly bright light point down there, oh, I guess
somebody tries to illuminate a church... yes, it seems there is something
like a church, but let's look at some less offensive place.
> > After a long debate, the Government accepted to offer a field to the
> > Orthodox Church
> > to build a huge cathedral at less than 200 m from us.
> > You could understand that such a palace, lighted by night, as all
> > monuments, will
> > stop definitively the observations. I don't mention the period of
> > construction
> > (maybe more than 2 years) when the dust will be large spread in the
> > area.
So, my recommendation is, if the Rumanian people wants to build a new
cathedral, it should made it in such a way that the night environment is
not spoiled. With a possible exception of using some faint, decent and
well-aimed lights in winter evenings (or mornings) shortly before and
after a holy mass, there should be no artificial lighting at all
penetrating to the outdoor environment. We astronomers (the first
night-environmentalists and people who understand best the faint light)
should explain the advantages of such a limitation to the public and to
the church (catholic, orthodox etc.). Apart from cultural advantages, the
damage to the wildlife is avoided this way (most of the wildlife activity
happens at night and is dependent on sufficient darkness and on absence of
directly visible lights -- lit parks are inevitably rather dead zones in
fact, as lights are very efficient insect-killers).
Light is a serious pollutant, the only one specific to the night
environment. Even if welcome in some cases, it should be avoided where and
when not absolutely necessary.
with best regards,
jenik hollan
http://www.astro.cz/darksky
PS. do you know the French-written conference
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/CielNoir/ ?
(it's surely easier for you to read it than for me).
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Jan Hollan,
employee of the
N. Copernicus Observatory and Planetarium in Brno
Kraví hora 2, CZ - 616 00 Brno +420 5 41 32 12 87
home:
Lipová 19, 602 00 Brno 5 43 23 90 96
member of the Ecological Institute Veronica
Panská 9, 602 00 Brno, Czechia fax: +420 5 42 21 05 61
e-mail: hollan@ped....cz http://astro.sci.muni.cz/pub/hollan
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