Re: Dark Sky in Czechia

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

On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Vanessa Thomas wrote:

> Dear Jenik Hollan,
> 
> Congratulations on the successful passage of the "Protection of the
> Atmosphere Act" in your country! I would like to write a brief news story
> for Astronomy.com about this success. I hope you could answer a couple of
> questions for me.
> 
> First, who organized this movement? Was there one organization or group in
> charge or several? 

The Czech Astronomical Society is the main responsible organization,
thanks to people in its DarkSky section. But all the most important
astronomical institutions were involved and their leaders signed together
the key two letters (to the Representatives, to the Senators):

   Jan Palous,    Astronomical Institute of the Acad. of Sciences

   Petr Harmanec, Astronomical Institute of the Charles University

   Jan Vondrak,   National Astronomy Committee

   Petr Pravec,   Czech Astronomical Society

   Eva Markova,   Association of Observatories and Planetaria


> How long did it take before you began trying to get the bill passed before
> you were successful?

First contacts have been made in summer, but serious activities began in
September (I have prepared the needed proposal, reasoning and translation
of the Lombardy law during summer). The willingness to include the LP
prevention into the law has been obvious already in September, the House
accepted it finally in December 2001.

The fate of the amendment has been not at all sure even in February (due
to our false impression that it is not necessary to inform the Senators as
completely as the Representatives), fortunately the version including the
amendment seemed better to the House than the Senate-changed version
(there were far more changes recommended by the Senate, who had just some
three weeks for the huge law, whereas the House had more than half a year
time for preparing it).


> The press release from the IDA states that anyone in violation of the law
> will be fined between 500 and 150,000 Czech crowns. Do you know how much
> that is in euros or U.S. dollars?

The municipality can impose such fines, if the concerned person does not
obey its instructions.  1 USD amounts to some 33 CZK, so the fines range
from $ 15 to $ 4500.

> Finally, may we use any of the images of lighting fixtures from your
> website? I'm thinking specifically of images at http://www.astro.cz/darksky/
> and http://astro.sci.muni.cz/pub/hollan/lighting/examples/brno/english.htm.
> If we may use these images, how should I give credit?

All the images are free for outdoor lighting education. In fact, I have
some new images of that substantial improvement of Brno downtown lighting,
just they are still not on the web (I'll put them there definitely
tomorrow, including some captions... English at first, this time). The
authors are mentioned just if other than me. So perhaps J. Hollan,
N. Copernicus Obs. and Planetarium in Brno (or simply , Brno Observatory).  

I'll try to make English captions for another images as well, perhaps in
Saturday. 

> Thank you very much for your time.
> 
> Vanessa Thomas
> Associate Editor
> Astronomy.com

Thank you for your interest in the outdoor lighting improvement...

Jenik Hollan