Night Environment Pollution and the Remedies through Legislation and Technology, in Czechia and in general

1. don't use artificial lighting outdoors when and where it's not necessary
2. let the light go just the right direction: down (and steep enough).

Lighting fixtures with no curved belly (a flat glass instead) do the job, (if lighting is really needed) like these in central Europe:

eco-settlement in Kassel	Strasse der Solarenergie in Gleisdorf	in front of Brno railway station	parking lot in front of the museum in Gleisdorf

The rules for minimizing adverse effects of lighting are well known. A draft template for the EU legislation is available in the eu_law directory. (The International Dark Sky Association submitted an incompatible template (Model Lighting Ordinance) to public discussion, an ad-hoc activity with serious concerns about it formed as Fix the Model Lighting Ordinance. http://fixthemlo.org. I'm a a signer of their both documents, as are many renowned experts in the protection of the night environment).

Most information at this site is in Czech only (see http://svetlo.astro.cz, or, as a novelty, a huge research report within http://amper.ped.muni.cz/noc), just a couple of things is in English as well (a non-local one is on lighting and crime).

Czech Republic included light pollution in its newly coined Clean Air Act in 2002, a step much appreciated throughout the world. However, the Act contained a declaration only, the government had to issue the very rules. It had never happened, due to efforts of ... and unconcern of ... (you can guess, I have to be diplomatic). However, our effort to formulate simple and still effective set of such rules led to a draft submitted to the House of Representatives (it has not been accepted, as e.g. there was no support from the Ministry of Environment, unlike in 2001), which may be of interest to everybody. I'd appreciate any advice what should be changed in this set to fit legislation of most countries. I have to stress that the limits contained in documents below are the most liberal ones as possible, it's a really minimum set. Even a lighting system which obeys these limits may still be a significatnly polluting one. Still, adhering to these limits would ensure that pollution of night environment would decline in the next decades, a profound change from its rise over the last century.

• Proposal of a new chapter of the Act, dealing with night environment
• The same proposal, with detailed comments as a pdf
• Short reasoning why such amendment is needed
• Directory with complete info on the amendment of the Clean Air Act of the Czech Republic, as regards light as a pollutant

The report mentioned above is a result of a research grant given by the Czech Ministry of Environment, Mapping the light pollution and negative influences of artificial lighting on the living nature. Most of the research has been done within several autumn 2003 weeks. Let's hope the report will change the attitude of the Ministry toward light-at-night. The text is in Czech only, I'll try to write some English summaries. All the stuff (one full CD) is within http://amper.ped.muni.cz/noc directory -- there may be occasional English comments in some subdirectories.

Some other links:

• Tiny parts of the Czech law from 2002 (Clean Air Act), on Protection of the Atmosphere, regarding the Light Pollution and further links, even to its full text
• A lecture on it (pdf, 0.1 MB) (on a conference Venice: Let's save the night, May 3)
• An updated 2003 lecture ``How should the light pollution be controlled -- an experience from the Czech Republic'' (text, pdf, 50 KB and foils, 2 MB) from the fabulous conference Ecology Of the Night,
• some non-Czech comments on its preparation within archives zak_oo of selected J.H.'s correspondence
• persons, adhering voluntarily to the law after June 1, see e.g. Light pollution begins to decline in Czechia
• Central European darksky mailinglist archive (English, Deutsch), see e.g.
  • the Press Release on the Czech anti-pollution law
• Drawings of different fixture types (available for downloading, copying or mirroring)
• Draft remarks on the ``Light pollution quantification'' (a html version is available too)
• Why the sky over your town and even far from it glows so much? (an illustration trying to explain an effect, which is quite difficult to understand).
• Software to read photometric files (ies and eulumdat formats) concerning luminaires and classify them to cutoff categories and ``Light Pollution Increments'' (also a lot of results for various luminaire producers is contained there)
• Online computation of some values relevant to lighting
• Images of some good and bad lighting fixtures, e.g.,
  • from Pardubice
• Addresses of Czech working group members

If you just came across this page, I stress that the best source of information on quality outdoor lighting is The International Dark Sky Association, darksky.org and the LiteLynx (TM) by Cliff Haas. My favourite European links are

• Canarias adaptations
• a wealth of information from Italy
• lichtverschmutzung.de
• darksky.ch
• Cologne symposium on light and health

• Fatal Light Awarenes Program
• Ecological consequences of Artificial Night Lighting
• Ecology of the Night conference, thanks to which scotobiology as a new discipline emerged.

Prevention of light pollution is a major environmental issue, not at all just an astronomical one as it may seem. Astronomers are just among the first ones who have realized how a quality outdoor lighting should look like. However, mentioning light pollution inside a basic environmental law in Czechia has something to do with the position astronomy traditionally has there (as regards the history from Tycho's times, the competent person is Zdislav Sima, contact is available here).

Remarks:

• This file should be accessible at www.astro.cz/darksky, at the server of the Czech Astronomical Society.
• The development of anti-light-pollution activities has been strongly favoured by www pages and www-accessible mailing lists at Masaryk University in Brno. One of them should be regional mailinglist for Central Europe, allowing German language as well as English. Its advantage over the magnitude6 at groups.yahoo.com is an archive which is accessible to anybody.