Re: TV-Documentary about "Dark-Sky-Project" (fwd)

[Jan Hollan <jhollan@amper....muni.cz>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 12:53:27 +0200 (CEST)
From: Jan Hollan <jhollan@amper....muni.cz>
To: VolkHein@aol...
Cc: rysan@smp-pce..., tomkova@smp-pce..., Ivo Chmelar <Chmelar@tsb...>
Subject: Re: TV-Documentary about "Dark-Sky-Project"

> 
> Dear Mr. Hollan,
> 
> I am a german tv-author and I am interested in the Dark-Sky-Project of the 
> Czech Republic. I would like to offer this theme to some german tv-channels. 
> 
> If I am successful, would you help us to organize the filmings?

Dear Volker,

with a pleasure, of course. Nur, ich spreche Deutsch nicht gerade
TV-tauglich, falls ich sollte auch spielen. Verstehe ich aber gut genug.
 
> What we need are f.e. the following informations:
> 
> 1. What will be seen, when the law starts on the 1st of june 2002? Will there 
> be someone "switching the light off"?

No, just perhaps some municipalities can address the worst offenders and
ask them to reduce the pollution they produce. Unfortunately, the law
contains a sentence, postponing all enforceable measures until there will
be a government decree on this issue.

Just the general obligation of everybody to reduce pollution produced by
him/her exists, so, e.g., skybeamers would be evidently illegal, but not
explicitly said so.  Everything will be on the voluntary level before the
regulations issued by the government will enter the force -- there is but
a draft of them, up to now.

I hope that also police will be encouraged to ask the offenders to
kindly switch off or shield some reflectors shining into the driver's
eyes. 

Perhaps I could try to organize some voluntary switch-off of a skybeamer,
installation of a time switch to limit the lighting of, say, Brno Castle
just till midnight, etc. 

> 2. What else could be part of our film? New sorts of lanterns?

There are several municipalities with lots of non-polluting lamps.
Pardubice, midway (by train) between Prague and Brno are perhaps the best
example, Brno has some good examples as well. Afternoon, twilight and
nighttime images may be informative.

There is just a technical problem of getting so tremendous ratios of
luminances (the worst lamps may be 10^5 times brighter than the lit
terrain) into one picture, to show the difference between the offending,
glaring lamps and the well-aimed, pleasant ones. Even the best lamps get
saturated in the image using the conventional TV technology without
composing the picture from several computer-processed images.

But, even with this limit, there are possibilities to show some convincing
scenes. Yesterday, I've been in a 13-th store of a hotel in Pardubice,
the highest building there, on some lighting meeting. An evening panorama
of the town would clearly show the newly lit streets with no glaring
points visible from above and the old lamps elsewhere being the only
visible things. 

Of course, showing some lamps with flat glasses in the streets during the
day, and another excellent examples, even some least polluting iron-cast
lanterns, from a proximity when somebody shows their properties, would
be very informative as well. The producers of such lamps would surely like
to collaborate, even without their names being mentioned.

This is perhaps the most important thing, to show that it is easy to
direct the light just where it is needed. So that people could demand the
same everywhere, even with no support in the law.

> 3. Is it possible to make filmings in a space-observatory?

Of course it is, with a broad choice.

> 4. Could you name us an official, who could give us an interview?

I guess that the Minister of Environment, Milos Kuzvart might be willing
to do so. He speaks German very well. 

> It would be nice, if you could help me to realize this project.
> 
> If you have any questions, please get in contact with me soon, because I 
> would have to organize this project within the next week.
> 
> Thank you so far.
> 
> Yours kindly,
> 
> Volker Hein
> Germany
 
with best regards,
 Jenik

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                                Jan Hollan
              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                                         43 23 90 96

                 member of the Society for Sustainable Living
             and volunteer of the Ecological counselling 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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