The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) will be organizing, in La Palma, the meeting “Dark and quiet skies for science and society” between the 3rd and 7th of October 2021. This meeting is the continuation of the online workshop with the same name, which brought together, a year ago, about a thousand researchers from throughout the world to campaign for the natural darkness of the night sky.

The congress “Dark and Quiet Skies for Science and Society” is backed by UNOOSA, the Spanish Government, and the IAU. It was planned for October 2020 and because of the measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 it was held on-line. The meeting brought together some thousand researchers from the whole world and approved a document to give governments, local government, and private companies a legal and technical basis for preventing the new technologies from having a negative impact on observations of the night sky and on biodiversity.

The congress on La Palma will focus on discussing the application of the recommendations put forward in 2020 in the comprehensive report (link).  The programme of the meeting includes presentations and there will be discussions in working groups. The number of participants will be limited to 150, and it will also be possible to register telematically and to attend the lectures on-line.

The motivation of this initiative, both the workshop in 2020 and the congress on La Palma which has just been announced, are the worries about the increased urban LED lighting, the constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit, and the emission of powerful radio signals.

More info.: http://research.iac.es/congreso/quietdarksky2021/pages/home.php