Dark-Sky parks/reserves: India

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. Additional information may please be sent as messages to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.

Pench

Pench named 1st ‘int’l dark sky park’ in India

In good news for night sky enthusiasts, Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra has earned the distinction of being named India’s first ‘International Dark Sky Park’ by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), a global movement to promote astronomy, reports Vijay Pinjarkar.


Pench is the second area in India to earn the ‘dark sky’ tag, following the Centre notifying Hanle in Ladakh as a ‘Dark Sky Reserve’ in 2022 and opening it for tourists. The Pench certification focuses on lighting policy, dark sky-friendly retrofits, education, and night sky monitoring.

Direction of lights changed, Pench tiger reserve to be India’s first Dark Sky Park

Vijay.Pinjarkar@timesgroup.com


Nagpur : Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra has earned the distinction of being named India’s first International Dark Sky Park within a tiger reserve for earmarking areas around the park that restrict light pollution for star-gazers to access pristine dark skies.


The certification was given by the International DarkSky Association, a global dark sky movement to promote astronomy. “The land of tigers will now inspire stargazers who seek to study and imbibe a deeper understanding of the universe. Pench has bagged the prestigious title of the first ‘Dark Sky Park’ in India and fifth in Asia,” said Prabhu Nath Shukla, deputy director of PTR.
In 2022, the Centre had notified Hanle in Ladakh as India’s first Dark Sky Reserve and opened it for tourists and night sky watchers.


The DSP certification for Pench focuses on lighting pol icy, dark sky-friendly retrofits, outreach, education, and night sky monitoring. It encourages communities in protected areas worldwide to safeguard dark sites. “This certification not only grants national recognition to Pench, but also catapults it on the international stage. Seizing this opportunity, we have inaugurated a night observatory with district planning development committee funds,” said Shukla. “To mitigate light pollution, over 100 street and community lights in Wagholi, Sillari, Pipariya, and Khapa villages in the park’s Paoni buffer area have been replaced with lights facing the ground,” he added.