This is a good news story to counter all those disasters many of us (including me) have experienced when our neighbour or nearby business has erected lighting that encroaches or in some case ruins our night sky
As many of you are aware, I have my
little slice of heaven located in a lovely rural setting several km's beyond the Canberra city limits, so it enjoys rather dark skies and more importantly a 360deg horizon that is free of any bright lights, with just the odd distant porch light (that look essentially like stars) that cause no issue and are all usually off by midnight anyway.
Earlier this year I noticed a very, very bright light in the distance to my north east, it would stay on all night and is bright enough to light up my observatory with a noticeable glow, cast a clear shadow and leave a spot in my eye if I looked at it and closed my eyes
. Needless to say and while not a game changing Bunnings development
(sorry Houghy) this was quite disappointing.
The light was clearly on the site of a nearby Boral quarry located some 3km from my observatory
I waited a few months to see if it would go away...but alas no cigar. I mulled over what to do, thought come on Mike it's not that bad just think of Houghy and Grady et al...but nup I just got more annoyed and more annoyed, how dare they put a blemish on my near perfect surroundings by casting unnecessary light across 3km!!!!
So yesterday (Sunday) I decided to pen an email to the manager of the mine, I just logged on to their website to get the contact and set about composing a polite email about who I am, what I do, where I am, and what the issue was, asking if the lights could be slightly redirected or shaded etc...easy enough huh? Well I wasn't holding out hope that a mine manager would give a toss about an amateur astronomer 3km away who had discovered a galaxy blah, blah, blah ..but you never know until you try
Well to my pleasant surprise I got a phone call this morning from Scott the mine manager and he was incredibly understanding, excited that an observatory was nearby, knew what the issue was and was going to rectify it immediately. Basically they have a big bank of LED lights for night maintenance but they are on timers to come on for scheduled night maintenance but these timers had failed. He said he has asked his sparky to investigate immediately and fix it by fixing the timers to put the lights back on timer to turn off at 9:30pm Mon, Tues and Thurs nights and not come on at all on other nights. Scott said he aimed to have it rectified by Monday and told me to provide him feedback and to let him know if that was acceptable and
if not (seriously!) to let him know if he needed to go a bit harder with less lighting
I was so happy I told him I wanted to hug him
So there ya go...hopefully the bright light that was causing me restless nights will be a thing of the past now and my 360deg dark horizon will be restored
Still beaming....
Mike
...after a coupl'a beers, I can hit a big B flat/high C and hold it long enough to make dogs bark 3km away....
