Lights out for dark skies

When you look up into the night sky, are you dazzled by the sight of twinkling stars or can you simply see a hazy orange glow?

Light pollution is a topic that's gathering worldwide momentum, and in a quiet corner of Shropshire, one man is joining in to campaign against it and recover our dark skies.

Andy Boddington, who tweets from both @AndyBodders and @DarkSkies2010, has made it his mission to explore ways we can reduce light pollution around the country.

He came up with the idea of celebrating dark skies in January, when Shropshire was plunged into temperatures of -14 degrees.

"It was so cold but the night skies were really clear. I remember looking out of my window one evening and seeing thousands of brilliant stars in the sky.

"I'm quite lucky where I live in Felton Butler - I can see the orange glow in the distance from the lights over Shrewsbury and Telford, but I still get beautifully clear skies above me.

"Straight away, I tweeted about it, and very quickly I started getting lots of messages from people all over the country, saying they couldn't see a thing because of light pollution."

Andy was also amazed to discover how many people confessed they'd never seen the milkyway.

"The classic test is Orion," explains Andy. "If you look at the belt of Orion, you should be able to see all 30 stars with the naked eye, and if it's much less then there's too much light pollution."

Andy says there are several things councils can do to reduce light pollution.

"Modern street lighting shines upwards, directly into the skies, which pollutes the clarity," says Andy.

"If councils used capped lights that are focussed on the ground, as they've started to do in America, we'd be able to start recovering our dark skies.

"We can turn off orange streetlights more, too. In built-up areas like Shrewsbury, where there's a lot of nightlife, it would be impractical to switch them off for safety reasons, but there are other areas where we could switch them off after midnight."

Andy has been working with dark skies projects around the world and is organising an international event on March 20th to raise awareness.

Twitterers from all over the world can take part in live online stargazing and report back to Andy on quality of the skies above them, by adding the hashtag #DarkSkies2010 to their tweets.

"We chose March 20th because it's the Spring Solstice and there's very little moon. We'll be streaming lots of things from our website including a live Twitter stream, articles on dark skies in the Georgian era, and theme music from an indie rock band.

"We're also encouraging people to take photographs, produce artwork and write poetry – anything they like. We want people to be inspired by the night sky."

So where's the best place in Shropshire for stargazing?

"Church Stretton, Bishops Castle and the Clun Valley," says Andy. "The South Shropshire hills have as good a view of dark skies as you'll ever find."

Details of the Dark Skies live website can be found on Andy's Twitter page @DarkSkies2010.

By Lara Page