Monmouthshire County Council has responded to a request from a keen astronomer in Goetre to turn off a streetlight last weekend. Youngster Amy Jones loves to view the skies at night but has a major problem – a bright lamp situated immediately outside her house. So when she discovered that a major meteor shower was scheduled for the second weekend in October she contacted council officers to ask them to deactivate the offending light allowing her to view the skies unhindered.
Amy is only 15 and is unable to travel far unaccompanied at night to avoid light pollution so she has to observe the heavens from her garden. Looking forward to witnessing the Draconid meteor shower she emailed Monmouthshire’s Street Lighting Officer Roger Joy who was happy to comply with her request.
Roger explained: “We made Amy aware that turning off the light for the whole weekend could present a potential safety hazard for pedestrians and drivers so we restricted this operation to between 7.30pm to 11.30pm on Friday (7th) and Saturday (8th). This allowed most residents to arrive home from work or leisure with the light on. In addition I contacted neighbours and police to inform them of the situation. Lights in Goetre are controlled by the Harvard Monitoring system so it was a fairly simple process to adjust the timing”.
Amy said: ‘I would like to say a big thank you to the council for turning the street light off – it helped me greatly. I consider astronomy as a career so this was a big help. Thankfully, the sky was clear on Friday, so I saw some meteors and on Saturday, I managed to see a fireball before the sky completely clouded over.’
