Category Archives: Announcements

BuioMetria Partecipativa receives the “Dark Sky Defender” award by the International Dark Sky Association

Announcements

Andrea Giacomelli, promoter of the BuioMetria Partecipativa project obtained the 2019 “Dark Sky Defender” award by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), the main organization worldwide committed to protection and promotion of the night sky.

This award is assigned to individuals or organizations in recognition of their exceptional efforts to promote and advance the mission and programs of IDA by promoting quality outdoor lighting to reduce light pollution and its environmental impacts.

Here is the motivation by IDA: For over ten years, Andrea Giacomelli has led the “BuioMetria Partecipativa” (Participatory Night Sky Quality Monitoring) project in Italy. The BuioMetria Partecipativa project has demonstrated a progressive approach, engaging not only “typical” subjects such as public administrations, utilities, or park managers, but triggering community-based activities, collaborations with artists, bartenders, and other segments of society who “thought they had nothing to do with light pollution”. Giacomelli organized more than 100 education and public outreach events.

The winners of the various IDA Award categories have been announced yesterday (Sep. 30) online, and the awards will be assigned on Nov. 8 in Tucson, Arizona, during the next IDA General Assembly.

Source: IDA

Oct. 11-13, 2019: 9th European Llargues Club Cup (Monticiano/Torniella/Ciciano, Tuscany) & Exhibition on the game of palla in Monticiano (until Oct. 27)

Announcements

Following the traditional palla eh! and palla a 21 Summer tournaments in Southern Tuscany, the beginning of the Autumn brings in the same area a very peculiar event: the ninth European Llargues Cup for clubs.

Llargues is one of the variants of hand-ball games played across Europe, especially in the Valencian region in Spain, with close relations to games played in the Basque country, in France, Belgium and the Netherlands (as well as Southern Tuscany and Piedmont).
Since 2006 some of the Tuscany players had the opportunity of participating in various llargues tournaments abroad. This year Tuscany finally has the honour of hosting in the Merse and Farma Valley, South of Siena, one of the main events for this discipline in Europe.

The teams into play will be Scalvaia and Torniella, as “home teams” from Tuscany, Benidorm, Parcent, and Relleu (from the Valencian Region in Spain), Kersken and Thieulain (Belgium), Maubeuge (France), in addition to a selection of players from the Basque Country.
The presentation of the teams will be on October 11 at 7PM in Monticiano. A first round of games will be then held on October 12 in Monticiano, Torniella, and Ciciano. Semi-finals and finals will then be on October 13 in Monticiano.


To further celebrate this event, an exhibition on the game of palla has been set up at the Biodiversity Museum in Monticiano. Here information on the game, images on the palla tournaments since the Seventies and various items will be on display. The exhibition will thus provide an opportunity to learn more about a discipline surviving in Italy in just a few rural niches, but which in past ages had a much wider diffusion in Europe.

The exhibition may be visited until Oct. 27. On Thursdays and Fridays from 3PM to 6PM, and between 10.30AM and 6PM on Saturdays and Sundays.

These events are promoted by Unione Sportiva Scalvaia, Municipality of Monticiano, Municipality of Chiusdino, Municipality of Roccastrada, Federazione Italiana Pallapugno, Confédération International Jeux de Balle, with the patronage of Regione Toscana.

For more information: 338 477 8350

You may also follow the official Facebook page for these events (in Italian).

Between August and September an exhibition on Franco “Yellow Dogs” Soldatini in Torniella and S. Galgano, Southern Tuscany

Announcements

The Piloni-Torniella Promotion association is organizing also for this year an exhibition with the patronage of the Municipality of Roccastrada. The exhibition will be opened with a ceremony at 6PM on August 10 in the premises of the former Torniella primary schools, in via Senese 21.
This initiative intends to give the right attention to the beauty of the art by a painter born in Roccastrada and grown artistically in Piloni.
We are speaking of Franco Soldatini (1927-1997) also known as “Il Cangialli” (“Yellow dogs”…due to the peculiarity of his character he was said to be “as rare as yellow dogs”), who maybe has not yet received an appropriate recognition for the quality of his work.
Over one hundred paintings have been selected from his extremely vast production, and have been lent by numerous owners from Southern Tuscany. Seeing all the paintings in a single setting will provide a comprehensive overview of the “painted poetry” which, day by day, Cangialli created taking inspiration from the nature of his places and the life of its inhabitants.
The exhibition will be open every day except Mondays from 6PM to 11PM until August 25.
From August 29 to September 8 it will be re-installed in the Scriptorium room at the San Galgano Abbey with the collaboration of the Municipality and the Pro Loco of Chiusdino, and may be visited from 9AM to 7PM.
For more information: Torniella ph. +39342 0903972
San Galgano ph.+39 0577 756738

Con il contributo di

Five walks around Tatti, Southern Tuscany

Announcements

In July 2019 we have published some maps with simple walks in the immediate surroundings of Tatti, in the area of Massa Marittima, Southern Tuscany. The walks have been suggested by Auro Luti, a Tatti resident with a deep knowledge of this territory, and are rather short trails (around 5 km).

A peculiarity of these maps is that you will find there also place names which are not part of official cartography. These have been compiled in the past months with interviews and meetings with the Tatti community, as well as the perimeter of the commons (usi civici) related to the village.

The maps are available from Ixtlan Agricamping and Fattoria di Tatti, who sponsored the creation of the maps.

For more information: info@pibinko.org

Thursday, July 25, 2019: The Night Sky, from the Hungarian Puszta to the Hills of Maremma (Terme Marine Leopoldo II, Marina di Grosseto, Tuscany)

Announcements

Thursday, July 25, at the Terme Marine Leopoldo II hotel in Marina di Grosseto (Tuscany) from 6.30PM to 8PM there will be a presentation of the mission by Zoltán Kolláth, astrophysics professor at the Savaria University Centre, Eötvös Loránd University, Szombathely, Hungary.

The professor, who is one of the leading authorities in the field of light pollution studies will be in Italy in the context of a collaboration with the BuioMetria Partecipativa, and will be visiting Southern Tuscany after four years (in 2015 he was part of a research team for a measurement campaign in the Farma Valley.

In the July 25 event you will have a chance to know more about the measurement activities which will be conducted in the following nights in various parts of Southern Tuscany -which in Italy is one of the few areas where a good night sky quality remains- and to understand how this characteristic, in addition to being an element of wonder, may become a territorial asset.

Citizens, businesses and public administrators can come to hear about professor Kollath’s experiences. In fifteen years, in Hungary he has been developing a whole sector of activity, spanning from scientific research, to environmental education, to dark sky park management, to actual lighting system renovation in order to procure lights which can couple energy efficiency and a strong compliance to state-of-the-art guidelines to minimize light pollution.

Last but not least, should you be interested in collaborating with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project, you will have a chance to know about the citizen science activities that this project is promoting since 2008, and through which you too can have an active role in the coming months.

For more details on the 2019 “buiometric” campaign, also see this post.

For more information, or to confirm your attendance, please write to bmp@pibinko.org or call +393317539228

Tue. Jul. 30, 2019: lecture on Atmospheric scattering and the view of the night sky by Zoltán Kolláth at Fondazione E. Mach, S. Michele all’Adige (Italy)

Announcements

The lecture will be a 2.30 PM

Measuring the quality of the night sky is necessary to assess light pollution and to evaluate its trends. These derive from a combination of existing and new lighting installations, and the applications of mitigation actions to reduce the amount of luminous flux escaping the primary areas where lighting is needed (and thus generating glare and skyglow), and containing increasing levels of blue light due to the diffusion of new generation lighting. Such measures are especially important in relation to protected areas, where night sky quality measurements by digital cameras have become a routine procedure. However, these observations lack the wavelength dependence of sky radiance; therefore, we have started a spectral sky quality survey parallel with the all-sky radiance measurements. To interpret the measurements, we also performed Monte Carlo simulations with the dominant light sources in the neighborhood of the measurement locations. We studied the effect of the tendencies of different atmospheric conditions for some reference cases with typical cloud and aerosol profiles.  The structure of the aerosol layers has a significant impact on the night sky radiance distribution, and it is neglected in most of the recent light pollution modelling. I will present our first results obtained at the Zselic Starry Sky Park, in the context of a now fifteen-year-old program for the protection and promotion of the night sky in various nature reserves in Hungary.

The visit to Fondazione Mach is part of a tour in Italy with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project, active since 2008 in the interdisciplinary protection and promotion of the night sky.

Zoltán Kolláth, professor of astrophysics at the Savaria University Center, Eötvös Loránd University, Szombathely, Hungary between 24 and 29 July. Prof. Kolláth is one of the highest international authorities in the field of light pollution studies, as well as in the promotion of the night sky as a resource. He was the creator of one of the first international star parks in Europe, the Zselic landscape protection area, and has for many years been a driving force in protecting night skies in Hungary, with the recognition of three parks certified by the International Dark Sky Association.

At the moment, the professor is responsible for a large national project for the development of scientific research on all aspects of light pollution, including the creation of new sustainable lighting systems. As an astrophysicist, he deals with the dynamics of pulsating stars. He is also very active in the dissemination in this sector, for example taking care of the soundtrack of astronomical signals that have been used in exhibitions and musical compositions, including a piece by John Legend.

A First Comparison of Italian Regional Light Pollution Legislation

Announcements

In the May 16 conference which we organised in Brescia with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project in collaboration with the University’s DICATAM on Interdisciplinary promotion and protection of the night sky, we had a very interesting talk on Italian Regional legislation by Maria d’Amore. Maria has been following this topic for over ten years working at the Emilia-Romagna regional administration, and among other topics she presented a table which we then invited her to share.

The table shows similarities and differences, with respect to various criteria, region by region (for those regions where light pollution regulations are present). This table is an extremely interesting reference both for experts, and for non-experts who may have an idea of how different administrations have been approaching the same topic in the course of time.Regions are listed according to a reverse chronological order related to the year of publication of the most recent law.

The table is updated to June 2019 and is currently maintained in Italian (we may consider translating the table if there are specific requests). For comments or for more information, please write to: bmp@pibinko.org

The CLIWOC database

Announcements

As a background this calls for the “Southern Cross” by Crosby, Stills e Nash

On the line of promoting lesser known resources in the field of culture, environment, and open innovation, I recently recovered the complete database of the CLIWOC (Climatological Database for the World’s Oceans 1750-1850) project. This was a European-funded project between 2000 and 2003 with the aim of digitizing the logs of ships from some European countries over a period of 100 years, so as to extreact weather observations, which needed to be recorded daily. Data are mostly from Spagna, Great Britain and Holland (with some data from France, Sweden, etc.).

Apart from the climatologic aspects, this exercise interested me because of the spatial analysis implications, and having finally accessed the full database, the annotations which can be found.

Here you see some basic visualizations (each dot is one day from a given ship, with additional data attached to it). Geopolitical analysts will be on the loose on this. During the Summer we will show you more of what’s in the CLIWOC trove.

Spagna
Olanda
Inghilterra