At the beginning of the Amazement about an award that many did not know what it should mean to stand. Six years after his appointment to the “star Park is established” in the Rhön. Visitors come from all over Germany and even from abroad, and wonder now about a wondrous clear view of the starry sky, the milky way and the Andromeda galaxy, as it is in Europe it is only rarely possible. In the triangle of Thuringia, Hesse and Bavaria offered star tours are often fully booked.
Ralf Euler
editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung, responsible for the Rhine-Main-part of the Frankfurt General Sunday newspaper.
F. A. Z.
“Our Ecosystem is through countless and sometimes unnecessary sources of Light sensitive a few weeks ago at a political summer tour through the Rhön disturbed,” was Oliver Conz (independent), state Secretary in the Hessian Ministry of the environment. Around two-thirds of all invertebrates, and about a third of all Vertebrates are night – and crepuscular; diurnal animals need a night’s rest. Artificial light to interrupt as immense. Insects dead mass of hot light sources, and missing, then birds as a food. Migratory birds would no longer be guided by the light at night because they would see the stars in the sky, the help you Navigate. “And also we people are bothered with too much artificial light in our sleep.”
The Rhön biosphere reserve had been declared in August 2019 in addition to the “star Park” – as the second in Germany, after the “star Park” West-Havelland. So far, only provisionally, as a star reserve in the Eifel nature Park is recognised. Due to industrialisation, urban sprawl and the large urban areas of natural darkness prevails only in a few places in Europe after sunset. The sparsely populated Rhön is one of these rare regions, because it is there in the sky at night is not only dark, as measurements have shown, but because by specifications much for the protection of the night. One of the requirements for the title “star Park”: 80 percent of the municipalities had to adopt a lighting policy, with the aim of reducing the light output.
The concept of the Park is to convey the importance of night without disturbing light also for Flora and Fauna. A bright environment to interrupt the growth of plants, argue environmentalists. Too much artificial light from street lamps, building lamps, and neon sign would lead to “light pollution”. It is called the brightening of the night sky by artificial light sources.
