Hertford Dark Sky Event
Lighting design: Simon Thorp, LAPD
Photography: LAPD
February 2024 saw a successful Dark Sky event with all outdoor lights switched off in the town of Hertford, UK. The lights around the castle were dimmed, allowing visitors to enjoy a guided tour of the night sky led by Bayfordbury Observatory from the University of Hertfordshire.
Stoane Lighting was pleased to be able to assist the event by providing night sky friendly equipment that enabled participants to navigate the venue safely with minimal lighting, all of it downward facing and having negligible impact on the evening landscape and visitor’s enjoyment of the night sky.
The event was successfully repeated again in 2025 and 2026.
I chose to approach Stoane Lighting to collaborate on this project because of the creativity and versatility they have shown in the past, in projects and events. Both in producing special products and looking at solutions from all angles. In addition, they have some suitable light fittings within their range such as the very small Tadpole spot and the Mushroom ground spike luminaires.
Stoane Lighting supported us hugely by negating the need to run power cables across large areas. They used remote batteries to power both the Tadpoles and the Mushrooms which had a great impact on being able to deliver lighting to any of the areas that we wanted without concern for safety.In addition they were able to us a PC Amber chip which ensured that we were using a light source that is considerate to the surrounding ecology but has a decent level of colour rendition for a public event.
Images from 2024
Images from 2026
