China’s 1st regulation to protect dark sky reserve passed
Authorities in Northwest China’s Qinghai Province on Thursday approved the country’s first local regulation to protect a dark sky reserve in Lenghu, where the province is building a world-class astro-observation site.
According to media reports, the regulation will take effect from January 1, 2023. It divides the astro-observation site in Lenghu into a core dark sky reserve and a buffer area to the dark sky reserve in order to protect the optical observation environment at night in Lenghu.
According to the regulation, in the core dark sky reserve, the type and brightness of light sources will be strictly controlled, and the illumination direction of all outdoor fixed night lighting facilities should be 30 degrees below the horizontal line. Construction of projects that affect the local astronomical observation environment and activities that affect the astronomical observation environment will all be prohibited in the reserve, media reported.
In the buffer area, the irradiation direction of all outdoor fixed night lighting facilities should be kept below the horizontal line, according to media reports.
The establishment of the astroobservation site in Lenghu, Qinghai, was announced in August 2021 after three years of monitoring and testing conducted by a Chinese research team led by Deng Licai from the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
The Qinghai government has been supporting the team’s research since 2018. The regulation passed on Thursday is the latest effort to support the establishment of the site.
The Lenghu area on Saishiteng Mountain is an ideal location to build an astronomical observatory, Deng told media.
He noted that this area in Lenghu Town, Mangya City, enjoys the advantages of clear night skies, stable atmospheric conditions, and a dry climate, offering great potential to become one of the world’s best observatory sites. Deng had called on protective measures to avoid damaging local optical observation conditions after finding the site.