Giant lasers, clouds that mysteriously glow – all the hallmarks of an intriguing lighting story I picked up over the weekend on the ABC website.

Luminous clouds are being measured by a giant laser to assess the extent of climate change on high altitude cloud formations.

The lasers are being pointed at the sky above Davis Station in Antarctica to measure clouds up to 100km above earth.  Scientists say those clouds are more easily seen as the world warms up.

Researchers say “Our atmospheric dynamics are such that as we’ve got a warming troposphere – which is where we live – as that warms that in fact is interlinked with a phenomenon called global cooling up in the mesosphere above 50 kilometres”.

“And so we expect that with a cooler mesosphere we’ll see an increased occurrence of these clouds.”

The clouds are a bright blue colour and their common name is luminous clouds.

I checked out the NASA web site and found not only a cool picture of what these clouds look like but also a handy diagram explaining how they are formed.  To the lighting geeks out there, enjoy…

Luminous clouds (image courtesy NASA)

And how they are formed (again, thanks NASA)

Lucerne in Switzerland has just been awarded the first prize in the 2010 City.Light.People awards in recognition of excellence in urban lighting design.  See the competition organiser Philips’ website for the full story.

image courtesy philips.com

The strategy for Lucerne is to illuminate the five distinct precincts of the city in an individual way, enhancing the beauty and character of each.  Of course this didn’t happen by accident; it is all part of a carefully conceived lighting masterplan which has then been implemented by a council who understands the importance of the nighttime lit environment and the impact this has on residents, tourism, liveability, sustainability, etc.

So what can we learn from Lucerne? Perhaps we could encourage our local governments to create and then maintain lighting masterplans for our cities.  In my home town of Melbourne the lighting strategy is probably getting close to being a decade old now; it was excellent in it’s day but design thinking and technology have moved some considerable distance since then.  And once a plan is in place stick to it – don’t fall into the trap of trying to light everything, let some spaces rest and create the contrast for the interesting things.

One of the judges for City.Light.People was Ulrike Brandi, the excellent German lighting designer who summed up quite beautifully “The approach to install a [lighting] masterplan for the city helps to create an atmosphere for the whole city. The vision of ‘less is more’ respects darkness and the day-night-rhythm of the residents.”

These are my thoughts but what do you think?  Please feel free to comment as always; all comments will be posted for discussion…