With January’s waning moon here we go with the next BuioMetria Partecipativa (participatory night sky monitoring), campaign, turning 18 on June 9.

With the coming of age of our project we will be conducting, together with those who want to join, measurements of night sky quality with the “buiometro” (dark-sky meter), and other observations to better understand how light pollution works, how it can be reduced (without worsening our lifestyle), and how to use light in a more aware way.

The activities for this year are part of the course on “Nightscapes and dayscapes (link in Italian) by uni*rural*. This is the non-formal education program by the pibinko.org network, in collaboration with various partners. Active participants will be receiving educational credits which in some cases may be “spent” with your education institutions.

To start building our new team in the past months we have already contacted some wannabee “buiometristas”, especially in the southwestern quadrant of Tuscany (Pisa, Leghron, Grosseto). Then as you know, with the pibinko.org network we are open to contacts from any land, so please contact segreteria@unirural.org or +393317539228 if you are interested.

For all the BMP “files”: https://www.pibinko.org/buiometria-partecipativa-2/ …but please see below for an educated summary.

A little bit of history

In February 2008, over a phone call between two environmental engineers about options for an amateur astronomer holiday in Southern Tuscany with a territorial marketing plan based on lesser-know aspects of the same region, the BuioMetria Partecipativa (or BMP) project was conceived.

At the time the project was the second globally (and the first in the western hemisphere) to propose lending to citizens sensors to conduct night sky quality measurements. Without initial external funding (and, in fact, never with a lot of external funding), the project initially had a significant media impact in Italy (RAI Radio 2, TG2 Costume e Società, Mickey Mouse magazine with a “Speciale Cacciatori di Buio” ecc.) and started to develop collaborations with numerous sectors of society (see this summary from 2017)

In the winter of 2010-2011 BMP promoted the creation of the first national coordination for the collection of light pollution data from fixed monitoring stations. This happened in collaboration with Veneto Stellato, Università di Roma Tre and various amateur astronomer associations. Namely, the BMP team, after launching the idea, took care of writing the code to handl the data harvesting from stations which were using different communications protocols, the aggregation of all monitoring data in a web database, and an online query/reporting interface. The system was active between 2011 and 2019 and in its peak phase was providing data from ten stations from different Italian regions.

The European dimension

Between 2013 and 2016 BMP also had a liaison role between Italian actors and European research on light pollution issues. Andrea Giacomelli was appointed as the primary point of contact for Italy in the “Loss of the Night” project in the COST research exchange program. In the same period formal collaborations were started with the University of Pisa and the National Research Council’s Institute of Biometeorology (now Bioeconomy) in Florence. Between 2016 and 2018 BMP also had collaborations with the Stars4all HORIZON project.

Awards and recognitions, in Italy and abroad

The first award recived by the BMP project was in 2009. This was for a national contest called “La Seconda Luna”, and BMP came in fourth out of 120 applicants, curiously with a prize for a category which did not exist in the contest rules. In 2015 the project was invitated for a presentation at the Eye on Earth conference in Abu Dhabi (where it turned out to be the only Italian project out of over 600 participants). In 2019 Andrea Giacomelli was awarded the title of “dark sky defender” by the International Dark Sky Association, for the dissemination and awareness work done in the previous ten years.

Apart from “serious” recognitions, BMP also had an impact which we may define “emotional”. For example, in 2020 a book of short stories about darkness “Il Buio” (Erasmo Libri) had a story inspired by the BMP project (and the story actually won a literature award).

BMP, regulations, and policy

BMP in time also had an active role in governance support (maybe this is not by accident, since one of the two founding engineers has also been part of the drafting team for a European Directive). In 2012 BMP sent eight comments to the revision of the Piano Ambientale ed Energetico della Regione Toscana (the Tuscan master plan on environment and energy). Five of these observations, including the one which led to declaring the night sky as a tourism resource, were accepted. Furthermore, the BMP experts have periodically been invited to provide advice on lighting and energy efficiency issues on various administration levels.

In 2018-19, following the “Capraia Night Sky” symposium (co-organizzato with UNIPI and CNR IBIMET), BMP proposed once again the idea of a coordinating body across various subjects involved in outreach, administration, and research. This did not go forward, but it would not be complicated to reboot the process.

Since 2020

The 2020 pandemic gave a severe blow to participatory activities: it would have been very difficult to run a project involving hand-to-hand instrument logistics. However, the core of the BMP engine was adapted to operate in strict lockdown mode, with the Participatory Lithology project, which also led Andrea Giacomelli to be invited to be an alumnus of the Robert Bosch Foundation.

In the past five years the BMP project has essentially operated as an “on-call” project, however our effort in weaving connections across subjects who ofter operate independently (but live, in any case, under the same sky) has not stopped. In particular, we have consolidated the use of music, in addition to photography, as a means to facilitate the dialogue among different parties, and always using maps as a minimum common denominator for analysis and communication. We also got to observe the Milky Way by day, as shown in the video below!

Educational credits

Over all this time, BMP also had a practical role in the educational field. We have covered primary, secondary, and high schools, universities (including lectures and tutoring for ERASMUS students), and professional charter organizations (architects, engineers, environmental guides). To learn more on how to acquire educational credit with the BMP project: segreteria@unirural.org or +393317539228