Vienna

A short one. I arrived in Vienna some hours ago. Beautiful city! I am done with the presentation for tomorrow. The more I look at it the more I am convinced some people are not going to like it… I will be talking tomorrow at 14:30. I am in the keynote speakers list, and I have been given half an hour. That is more than enough to convey the two main messages I have in mind:

-Astronomy is a pervasive science, which has percolated through millennia of history, going down to the roots of culture itself (some of you might recognize Hamlet’s Mill here);
-The night sky and all what it entangles is at risk. The appearance of highly efficient (in terms of lumens/watt) devices (e.g. LEDs), producing bluish-white light, represent a serious threaten.

I hope I will manage to have the audience digest this without opening a can of warms. The audience is going to be full of people from the lighting field, and the meeting is sponsored by many lighting industries. Wish me good luck…

I took this photo an hour ago. You can recognize the beautiful St. Stefan's Cathedral. It is also a nice example of bad illumination. What is the purpose of these globes? Illuminate the skies? Make you blind? Prevent you from seeing the Cathedral?