Sir, - We are told that it was Confucius who said it was better to light a candle than to curse the dark. No doubt this is sound advice in many instances, but there are times when darkness is natural, appropriate and desirable. I have not seen any counsel from the sage for those who might have cause to curse the light.
Not only astronomers, but lovers of the beauties of nature generally, lament the creeping blight of artificial lighting affecting the night sky. While some measure of lighting is desirable in towns and cities, its wasteful and indiscriminate use has got completely out of hand. On a lesser scale the blight ranges from so-called security lighting, which lights the thief unfailingly to his target, to mindless flicking of searchlights across the sky by concert promoters.
With the onset of the new millennium a variety of projects have been suggested to mark the occasion. Where these take the form of something visually stimulating, it seems the highly efficient but imaginatively challenged expedient of lighting up the night sky is to be the facile solution. Light pollution sources in Dublin is now beyond the Pale, literally, so that one or more illuminated spikes can hardly make it much worse. On the other hand, however well intentioned, the proposal to light up the Rock of Dunamase can be greeted only with dismay. Such an exercise should be as welcome as a shower of agents orange into Kennedy Memorial Park. Horribly, it could start a trend.
Here is a suggestion for something really spectacular, and cheap. On the first clear moonless night of the new millennium, let all lighting of public areas be turned off for a few hours. People might then realise they are being deprived of one of nature's great spectacles. After that, perhaps we could return to the old civilised use of public lighting, which saw it extinguished some hours after midnight. - Yours, etc., L Smyth,
Director of Observations, Irish Astronomical Society, PO Box 2547, Dublin 14.