Dark skies, dark secrets

I had the honour of representing our profession at a wonderful IALD/PLDA event in Sydney this week called Dark Skies, Dark Secrets.

The keynote speaker was Fred Watson, an esteemed astronomer and popular scientist who gave a superbly interesting presentation about the night sky, stars, galaxies and the mysterious dark matter and spooky sounding dark energy – “it could be in the room, you know” Fred explained.

Fred was understandably keen for the likes of us lighting folk to design in such a way as to not light up the night sky with light pollution and hence destroy the visibility of the stars. And fair enough I say.  The fact is that the lighting designers in the audience are probably a lot less likely to illuminate things irresponsibly; we probably think about exactly where we place light more than others. This point was well illustrated by on the other speakers who showed us images of a beautiful and delicate lighting scheme to the facade of a historic building, using lots of low powered LED fittings bringing out the rich detail of the facade.  Next door was a pretty crappy looking building which shouldn’t have even been lit in the first place and a great big uplighting scheme. This indiscriminate uplighting is the astronomers’ bigger issue, rather than the work of the professional lighting designer.

It was an interesting conversation and an excellent event; well done Mirjam Roos for organising.

Paul waxing lyrical