June the 21st, 2021 - The Lastovo - Island of Stars/Otok Zvijezda project is being revived once again, with the first activities beginning last week.
As Dorian Bozicevic/Morski writes, back at the beginning of this year, an initiative was launched to revive the "Lastovo - Island of Stars" project, and at the invitation of the Lastovo Tourist Board, cooperation with the Croatian Astronomical Union began.
Astronomical workshops for elementary school students
The Secretary General of the Croatian Astronomical Association held a full-day astronomy programme for elementary school students in Lastovo through two workshops and observations, one on the sun and the other workshop called Stars, Constellations and Light Pollution.
Public observations of the Moon and measurements of the quality of the Lastovo night sky
As part of last week's astronomical programme held on Lastovo, two public observations of the moon were held with telescopes where citizens and tourists alike could view and photograph the moon with their own smartphones, and night sky quality measurements were started with SQM-L and TES TASS devices will be needed so that the Municipality of Lastovo and the Lastovo Islands Nature Park can apply for the status of the International Dark Sky Park with the International Dark Sky Association (IDA).
A meeting on the Dark Sky Park was held within the Municipality of Lastovo
Last week, the Municipality of Lastovo held the first concrete meeting with representatives of local institutions that must be involved in order for the "Lastovo - Island of Stars" project to fully come to life and to continue work on declaring the International Dark Sky Park on Lastovo.
The meeting was chaired by the Secretary General of the Croatian Astronomical Association, Dorian Bozicevic, and the meeting was attended by the Mayor of Lastovo, Anita Jancic Lesic, the director of the Elementary School "Braca Glumac" Vedrana Ortika-Medini, a representative of the Lastovo Islands Nature Park, Gojko Antica, the director of the Tourist Board of Lastovo, Bruno Rina, and Diana Magdic, an employee of the same tourist board.
The meeting presented the conditions that need to be met in order for Lastovo to successfully apply for the status of an International Dark Sky Park and agreed on the first steps that need to be taken to start the same process (minor changes in outdoor lighting, night sky quality measurements, activities for children, adults and tourists, determining and arranging places for astronomical observations etc).
Among other things, the meeting discussed the installation of cameras in Croatia and the Global Meteor Network, as well as the possibility of the Visnjan Observatory on Lastovo to install a robotic telescope for tracking and detecting asteroids and launching extracurricular activities in astronomy at the aforementioned Lastovo school.
For more, follow our lifestyle section.
