Astro-Tourism and Light Pollution Prevention in Tanzania
GLOBE AT NIGHT CAMPAIGN
FEB 21 TO MARCH 6 2011
Light pollution denies people their long-standing natural heritage to view stars that nature has provided for them at night. In Tanzania we are lucky that we still have large areas where there are no artificial lights with extremely dark skies.
However, in our cities we are already on our way to destroying the light environment of our skies. For example, in Dar es Salaam we can see hardly less than one tenth of the stars that we used to see twenty years ago. We used to be told that stars are uncountable, but if you go out at night in a city, even on a moonless night, you will see large spaces of sky between stars and you can even count the stars. In Dar es Salaam things are really bad, and you can see only around 50 stars at any one time. Compare this with around 3,000 stars that you can see one you are upcountry away from the cities. You can easily lose count in the jumble of closely packed stars that you see in most parts of Tanzania – hence we get the expression “uncountable” that we to describe the number of stars in sky.
We do need to develop our country and we cannot avoid increasing the number of lights in urban areas. But by making the correct choices of light fittings that do not allow light to shine upwards towards the skies, we can still develop sensibly as well as controlling light pollution. This will allow our skies to remain dark for everyone, including our future generations to enjoy the beauty of abundant stars.
By protecting from this type of pollution, we will also attract astro-tourists from the western world where light-pollution has completely blanketed their view of stars. Our conducive climate and clear skies are also very suitable for tourists to enjoy star-gazing at night after an exciting day viewing exotic game and nature. Our location near the equator allows star watchers to view in one night, between dusk and dawn, almost 90% of all the stars that there are in the night skies. Combine all these features and you get a unique opportunity to attract astro-tourists by the thousands. Promotion of astro-tourism will bring in much needed extra revenue for our economy.
Creation of Dark-Sky Parks would be the first step towards preparing for astro-tourists. In such parks, the type of light fittings uses would be controlled by laws to prevent light pollution. We have vast expanses to choose from since most areas of in our country are not yet touched by light-pollution.
Most suitable dark sky areas can be located by mapping the country for light pollution by getting measurements of star visibility across Tanzania. The worldwide Globe at Night Campaign that is currently going on provides us with an opportunity by getting ordinary people to participate in gathering night sky conditions above their areas. The data they submit is used to document the light pollution around the world and create a light pollution map of the world, including Tanzania. The Globe at Night Campaign is a simple citizen-science undertaking where ordinary people can help to collect data of national consequence.
By participating in this campaign we will be able to get enough information to create our own dark sky database that will allow us to demarcate dark-sky zones after which, more detailed measurements can be made in selected areas. This will lead to identification of possible dark-sky areas that can be converted to Dark-Sky parks with legal protection.
Join the 6th worldwide GLOBE at Night 2011 campaign now going on from Feb. 21 to March 6
“The GLOBE at Night program is an international citizen-science campaign to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution by encouraging everyone everywhere to measure local levels of night sky brightness and contribute observations online to a world map.” (http://www.globeatnight.org/)
Follow these Five Easy Star-Hunting Steps:
1) Find your latitude and longitude = ask at your local school or government office.
2) Find Orion by going outside an hour after sunset
ORION is a group of stars consisting of four stars forming a rectangle and three stars close together along its diagonal. You will see it Overhead about 7-10pm local time.
3) Match your nighttime sky to one of our magnitude charts(Click to see chart1 and to see chart2)
4) Report your observation. (Send an SMS to 0713517009 or email to ntjiwaji@yahoo.com and give (a) the name of your observing place, (b) your latitude and longitude, and (c) the sky magnitude you found from the charts.
You can also report your observations directly on the website: http://www.globeatnight.org/report.html
5) Compare your observation to thousands around the world. http://www.globeatnight.org/analyze.html
