From protection zones for astronomical observatories…

7As in situ protective systems, dark sky parks and reserves are heirs of astronomical observatories’ protection zones. Indeed, the protection of dark skies, and therefore the fight against light pollution, was long the exclusive concern of professional astronomers, constituting a major goal in the preservation of their scientific observation activities. Historically located at the heart of the cities (Toulouse, Paris, Berlin, London, Rome …), astronomical observatories soon suffered from light pollution linked to the development of public and private lighting. During the twentieth century, many of them had to move from their location to the outskirts of populated areas, where they were quickly confronted with the same problems due to urban growth. Thus, to avoid light pollution due to the expansion of the Eternal City, the Vatican observatory, located in the heart of the papal city since the second half of the sixteenth century, had to be moved for the first time in 1930 to Castel Gandolfo, 35 miles south of Rome, and then to Mount Graham, Arizona, in the early 1980s. [2]

8While most major observatories are now located in desert areas (the Atacama Desert in Chile), high mountains (Mauna Kea, Pic du Midi de Bigorre), or in very sparsely populated areas, those which have remained in the vicinity of urban areas are surrounded by conservation areas, with radii that can span several kilometers. Ten observatories in the world benefit from such zones. The largest areas surround the North American observatories (McDonald, Kitt Peaks, Mount Palomar, Mount Hopkins), they cover several hundred square kilometers with radii ranging from 40 to over 90 km.

… to “Starlight” Reserves

9Since the early 1990s, and especially since the 2000s, new concepts for the protection of dark skies have emerged. The goal is no longer only to preserve visual and instrumental access to the sky, for purely scientific use; it also takes into account “starlight” as a real environmental bonus, whose protection and development can allow the existence of different forms of tourism that aim to be just as sustainable.

10Two North American associations, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) and especially the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) in the United States created certification for dark sky parks and reserves that are now partially included in the Starlight Foundation program (2009a) launched in 2007 with the support of UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The certification programs of these three organizations aim to recognize local commitments to fight light pollution and to identify and preserve sites characterized by the quality of the night sky. The aim is to protect both the night sky as well as the environment, and to promote associated values: scientific (astronomy), environmental (impact of light pollution on biodiversity), landscape (revelation of nocturnal celestial landscapes), or cultural (secular multifaceted relationship between societies and dark sky).

11With different geographic scopes, the programs complete each other by offering a complete range of certifications suitable for different types of sites. The International Dark-Sky Association has defined three categories of area protection and dark sky development, including “park” and “international reserve”; the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada has established three categories, among which is the “astronomical urban park”; and the Starlight Foundation has established six categories, including “Starlight heritage site” and “Starlight landscape” (Table 1). Thus, possible dark sky sites that could potentially become certified parks and reserves are no longer necessarily and solely located near active observatories. Possible sites could be natural areas that are already protected, iconic landscapes, urban parks, as well as former scientific institutions that played a significant role in the history of modern astronomy, and even archaeological sites associated with an ancient conception of the firmament, as listed in a recent report by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Ruggles, Cotte, 2010).

Table 1

Geographical scope and variations of the major certifications of Dark Sky parks and reserves

Organism Geographic Scope of certifications Variations of certification Number awarded in February 2014 National (Canada) Dark Sky Reserve, Dark Sky Preserve Urban Star Park 15 2 International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) International International Dark Sky Park International Dark Sky Reserve International Dark Sky Community 15 8 6 Starlight Foundation International Starlight Heritage sites Starlight Astronomy sites Starlight Natural sites Starlight Landscapes Starlight Oases - human habitats Mixed Starlight sites Tourism Destination 8 4

Geographical scope and variations of the major certifications of Dark Sky parks and reserves

12Even though RASC and IDA certifications also aim to develop tourism in Dark Sky parks and reserves (IDA, 2007) by promoting novel ways to practice astronomy (such as “wilderness astronomy”), it is within the Starlight Foundation program that the goals and sustainability of developing tourism are the most explicitly and precisely developed. In 2009, under the auspices of the World Tourism Organization, the Starlight Foundation set up a certification system “to ensure the quality of tourism experiences involving the nightscapes, the view of stars and the cosmos and the related scientific, cultural and environmental knowledge” (Starlight Foundation, 2009b). This development process, as defined by Stéphane Héritier (2006), is also related to the emergence of a real “territorial resource” (Gumuchian, Pecqueur, 2007) for the development of a new brand of tourism: astronomy-based tourism. As there is no official definition or label, we propose the following definition: astronomy-based tourism or “astro-tourism” (Hanel, 2010) or “scientific tourism in connection with astronomy” (Bumat, 2009, 2010) is a form of tourism in which the motivation to travel is the possibility to visit scientific institutions, the practice of astronomy in places equipped for this purpose and / or protected from light pollution, celestial events (lunar and solar eclipses, aurora borealis, meteor showers), contemplative discovery of nightscapes and sites that testify to an ancient conception of the firmament. Astro-tourists are either (more or less experienced) amateur astronomers or tourists in search of new sensory and cognitive experiences related to open air activities. Thus, depending on the places and practices to which it is associated, astronomy-based tourism can be considered a variation of the different forms of tourism at whose crossroads it is located: scientific tourism, natural tourism, cultural tourism.

The invention of the heritage status of dark skies

17The peculiarities and difficulties of granting heritage status to dark skies are inherent in the very nature of the object itself. A dark sky cannot be defined by a single parameter. It lies at the crossroads of several types of interactions with societies. This multidimensional identity can thus be determined by the stance of man, perceiving the dark sky by “trajection” (Berque, 1990): a double perception of the environment, both physical and phenomenal with three “volumes” to understand simultaneously (Antoine et al, 2002):

• “a reality determined by natural conditions (biophysical dimension)” (ibidem): when they are not masked by halos of urban light, the sky’s natural lights send us the image of stars and other celestial objects visible to the naked eye or through instruments (nebulae and galaxies, the Milky Way, the moon, etc.);
• “a place of collective memory (cultural dimension)”: secular mediation between societies and the sky have produced a strong cultural heritage, an “artialisation” (Roger, 1997), perceptible through religious beliefs, cave paintings such as the Navajo Star Ceilings, megalithic ensembles such as Stonehenge, or architectural monuments like the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur [4];
• and, finally, “a phenomenal perception (subjective dimension)”: each individual composes his vision of the dark sky according to his or her own subjectivity.

18This definition should not overlook the fundamental differences between the dark sky and the terrestrial landscape: its immutability and limitless alterity. From the ground, “trajection” transforms our vision of the dark sky. However, this interaction, which offered a presence and a new dimension to man’s position on earth, has considerably deteriorated, falling victim to modernity. The growing artificialisation of the relationship between man and the environment and the exponential increase in light pollution have transformed the night sky into an exotic, abstract object, a virtual, other place that is the privilege of remote places at the edge of ecumene where the largest observatories have taken refuge.

19According to Pierre-Antoine Landel (2007), the heritage process is divided into two major phases. First is the invention or the selection of objects to assimilate to a heritage, generating a multiplicity of “aesthetic, artistic, historical, economic, social values” (Greffe, 1990). However, it is not enough to invent or select a heritage for the object in question to immediately acquire the status. The different players step in during the second phase to confer upon the chosen object a true identity, even institutionalizing it through rigorous expertise and classification. The dark sky currently falls somewhere between these two steps.

20Since the early 1990s, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) has tried to include the night sky in the list of world heritage, affirming and linking it to natural and cultural values through its confrontation with light pollution. With exceptionally effective communication and awareness raising strategies (publications, events, development of a worldwide network of players, creating certification), the IDA has designed and delivered an invented heritage status for dark skies, at the crossroads between nature and culture. However, IDA has faced two interrelated obstacles, which has prevented the night sky from truly being identified with heritage. The first is the process’s focus on the dark sky instead of its mediation with human societies, which inevitably leads to the second issue: the impossibility of actually granting heritage status to an object that is beyond reach. Therefore, the night sky as heritage has been tacitly recognized, even though the recognition stands alone amidst a relative void.

21In 2007, the Starlight conference in La Palma entitled “In Defence of the Quality of the Night Sky and the Right to Observe the Stars” was held mainly in order to address this illusory status. Its goal was to recognize the different values of the night sky, to protect and enhance them with reserves, and to request UNESCO to include the night sky on the World Heritage List. UNESCO answered with a declaration in 2007 that there was no criterion that would allow the night sky and celestial objects to be considered under the 1972 World Heritage Convention; as the Convention was designed to recognize the interaction between humans and nature and the fundamental need to preserve the balance between the two. To overcome the difficulties posed by the definition, the “International Workshop and Expert Meeting on Starlight Reserves and World Heritage - scientific, cultural, and environmental values,” was held on March 10 and 11, 2009 in Fuerteventura in the Canaries. This effort to reach a compromise led to the recognition of the requirements and guidelines for Starlight Reserves as “additional values” for future astronomical sites that could be included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

The dark sky as an intrinsic dimension of cultural and natural heritage

22In 2008, independently from the Starlight initiative, UNESCO and the IAU launched the “Astronomy and World Heritage” program to grant heritage status to astronomy sites. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) was given the responsibility of identifying and inventorying sites that could be included in the World Heritage List (Ruggle, Clotte, 2010). The identification of these future sites was a prime opportunity for the Starlight Foundation. The dark sky, intrinsically linked to these sites, appears to be a gap in the heritage process initiated by UNESCO. Indeed overlooking the sky’s importance and values in this approach to cultural and material heritage is equivalent to only partially evaluating the interaction between humans and nature, which is the very basis of ancient and modern, common and scientific astronomy practices.

23To overcome the tensions and difficulties linked to the definition, UNESCO and the Starlight Foundation implemented a compromise by recognizing that the sky is a “invaluable, natural human resource” in a context where its observation by humans is increasingly threatened by light and air pollution. As for Starlight Reserves, they would reinforce the future astronomical heritage as a tourist medium that would convey scientific, cultural and environmental values.

24In the end, it is through its association with existing heritage that the dark sky acquired a status. In other words, it is a medium, an additional resource interacting with natural and cultural heritage. Thus, we will have to address a genuine reconfiguration, fusing the statuses. This logic is clearly expressed in two combinations.

25The first is an association of the dark sky with cultural heritage: the dark sky is not part of cultural heritage, however, it can be associated with the astronomical heritage of the pre-telescopic, modern era because it is an integral part of its origin.

26The second is the association of the dark sky with nature and the eponymous heritage: the dark sky is not threatened, but the deterioration of its image refers to a degradation of the nighttime environment, of nature in general, and it becomes an additional symbol of the breach in the relationship between man and nature.

Two examples of interactions between the dark sky and natural heritage

27Having the dark sky enter into the list of natural heritage indicates certainly more than a simple extension of the category. Strictly speaking, this is more like a full “nocturnisation” that echoes the nearly complete “diurnisation” of urban nights as described by the geographer Luc Gwiazdzinski (2005). Already in 2002, in an issue of Territoires 2020, Datar’s scientific journal devoted to territories and foresight, the author imagined the creation of night reserves and parks, areas of darkness and silence in which urbanites could come to relax and meditate, far from all the light and noise pollution. As we have shown, only ten years later, what Luc Gwiazdzinski had presented as a utopia, has indeed become a reality. In fact, this should not be a surprising trend because there is an underlying logic. Since the nineteenth century, the history of protected natural areas has often been marked by protectionist responses to areas that are spatially and temporally removed from the city, areas that are figuratively, a “compensatory elsewhere” (Piolle, 1993). The search of fresh air, true nature, wilderness, has been increased by the search for darkness and starlight.

Nocturnal celestial landscapes … “see the milky way in…’’

28The dark sky and even the Milky Way were certainly still visible in urban skies during the second half of the nineteenth century. Engravings in astronomy books of the period (Guillemin, 1877) and certain paintings by Van Gogh demonstrate this (Van Heugten et al., 2008). Today, over two thirds of the population of the United States, half of the European Union’s, and one fifth of the world population have lost the capacity to see with the naked eye the heavenly environment in which we live (Cinzano et al., 2001). In the early twenty-first century, the sight of the dark sky with the diversity of its stellar forms has thus become a rarity that eminently deserves “to be made into heritage” (Di Meo, 2007) and it is undoubtedly generating what Nathalie Heinich (2009) calls a “heritage granting emotion”.

29This dimension is particularly significant in the emergence and mediation of two new landscape concepts: the nocturnal skyscape and the natural lightscape. The first was developed in the context of the Starlight Foundation. It is the subject of one of the six types of “Starlight Reserve” certification (Tab.1). The second is used by the Night Sky Team of the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency responsible for the management of US national parks. Though these two landscape concepts are associated with the recognition of the ecological and cultural dimensions of the dark sky, they are also fully linked to the experience of nature offered to visitors of protected spaces. The vision of the dark sky is a vector of the experience of spatial and temporal otherness of the night and of chronos (natural time) compared to the day, which remains strongly influenced by the rhythms of tempus, or “anthropic time” as defined by Claude and Georges Bertrand (2002).

30In the process studied here of granting heritage status to the night sky, the landscape approach is the most successful form of coverage of the various links in the “heritage chain” (Rautenberg, 2003; Heinich, 2009), and, in particular, if we observe current systems at work in the North American dark sky parks and reserves. [5]

31The links of “knowledge” of “restoration and recovery” and “mediation” are now fully developed and integrated into the management of already certified protected areas (Natural Bridges, Death Valley, Jasper, Cypress Hill …) or who plan to be (Lava Beds, Great Basin …).

32In the parks of the western United States, the Night Sky Team is responsible for metrology and the monitoring of the quality of the night sky. “Dark rangers” organize astronomy evenings and develop interpretive activities. These activities are accompanied by several types of graphic media, illustration or photography, that help reveal the “dark side” (Parcs Canada, 2011) of national parks. Regardless of the destination of such images (logo, poster), the construction of night skies inevitably relies on these “exogenous mediators” (Héritier, 2006), often incorporating the shapes of daytime landscape and geo-symbols already identified as such: the stone arches of Natural Bridges, Bryce Canyon’s hoodoos, Death Valley sand dunes, the yuccas in Joshua Tree Park, and the backdrop of Pyramid Island in Jasper National Park, to name a few.

33Lavishly illustrated, Tyler Nordgren’s book (2010), subtitled “A guide to astronomy in the national parks,” is at the heart of this approach. This in-situ and in-visu artialisation, to borrow Alain Roger’s distinctions (1997), is both classic and, in this case, essential. There will always be a lag between the immediate visual perception of heavenly landscapes and their photographic record, which requires exposures of varying lengths to capture the colors of the Milky Way or star trails. This artialisation also reflects the implementation of trails and the identification of sites recommended for observing the night sky (“dark sky viewing site” or “stargazing sites,” depending on the different designations). Still in their infancy, these initiatives have nonetheless been developed in the Yosemite National Park in the United States, in Jasper Park in Canada, and in Europe in the Galloway Forest (Scotland) and Exmoor (England) National Parks.

Observing the dark sky: a new way to experience wilderness

34Fabienne Joliet and Peter Jacobs (2009) describe the iterative process of building a sense of wilderness that combines the naturalness of a given space and the cognitive experience that is the result. Stéphane Héritier (2006) demonstrated the role of the “wilderness experience” in the practices of visitors to western Canada’s national parks including Jasper (Alberta).This national park was certified Dark Sky Reserve in 2011. Because of its size (10 878 km ², equivalent to the surface area of Jamaica, it is currently the largest reserve of this type in the world. Backing a certification policy strongly supported by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), Parcs Canada has recently begun to promote a new form of practical astronomy: “Wilderness astronomy”(Parks Canada, 2011). This practice eschews the conventional equipment of the amateur astronomer, which was heavy, cumbersome, and unsuited to roaming observations. It favors naked eye astronomy or observations with only few instruments. “Wilderness astronomy” is presented as “a new way to see Canada’s wild spaces” (ibid.). It combines the discovery of nightscapes with the discovery of the astronomical knowledge of native populations. While helping to strengthen the attractiveness of protected areas by “highlighting the originality of experiences available to visitors” (Héritier, 2006), this practice in fact is aligned with representations of wilderness. Indeed, there are two kinds of specific characteristics and values that appear in the criteria for choosing nightscapes. They can be purely aesthetic in their association between the dark sky and landscapes; a perfect illustration is Tyler Nordgren’s 2010 publication, cited above. However, they can also be considered an indicator of the naturalness of night skyscapes and, by extension, the spaces that compose them. This is demonstrated by the work of Dan Duriscoe (2001) of the National Park Service’s Night Sky Team.

35Indeed, from the horizon to the zenith, the density of the sky’ stellation is a visual indicator of the absence of light pollution (photo 2). Conversely, increasing the artificial brightness of the background sky has led to a proportional decrease in contrast that helps distinguish diffuse celestial objects such as the Milky Way, or even objects with little light such as the zodiacal light. [6]

Photo 2

The Milky Way

The Milky Way

The Milky Way above the Vignemale peak, at the heart of the Pyrenees National Park, in the core zone of Pic du Midi International Dark Sky Reserve.

36It is the capacity to see these diffuse celestial objects that confers upon the dark sky its quality and purity. Therefore, with strong darkness, as in the heart of dark sky parks and reserves whose boundaries exclude the presence of permanent sources of light, we can consider that the artificial lights diffused by the halos of bright spaces (urbanized areas) have the same impact on natural heritage that other damaging processes of human origins have on fauna, flora or daytime landscapes. They alter the sense of virgin and wild nature that is offered when visiting such areas. When the air is exceptionally clear, the way atmospheric light scatters results in halos created by artificial lighting to be seen tens or even hundreds of kilometers away (Cinzano et al., 2001). Therefore, visually speaking, the traces of artificial lights, which also define in a certain fashion the limits of the ecumene, push further away those areas that could potentially be lit only by natural light. Given the rate of urbanization in the countries of the northern hemisphere, there remain few intrinsically dark areas in this part of the planet. In the main zone of the current distribution of dark sky parks and reserves, they are limited to the American West (Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Great Basin) and the northern parts of North America and Europe.