At 936 meters above sea level and in the heart of the province of Valencia lies one of the fourteen best places on the planet to observe the light of the stars: Aras de los Olmos, a small town with clear skies and free of contamination. light
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Declared a Starlight Reserve by Unesco in 2017, Aras de los Olmos becomes a protected natural space committed to defending the quality of the night sky and access to starlight, and in which universities and associations are committed to spreading scientific and research.
Aras of the Elms. Photo: Dreamtime
With less than 400 inhabitants, this humble enclave in the Valencian interior has become an astrotourism benchmark, as confirmed by the data from 2018: it received more than 5,000 visitors from Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, interested in astronomy, as confirmed by its councilor of tourism, Angelina Andrés Vicente. The founder of the company AstrExperiència from Aras de los Olmos, Alejandro Vera, assures for his part that 95% of the public corresponds to families and 5% to experts.
In order to obtain the Starlight Reserve certificate, in addition to the quality of the sky, many other factors intervene such as the preservation of astronomical observation conditions, the conservation of nature, the integrity of night landscapes and cultural heritage. Light pollution is also relevant to achieve this denomination: Vera explains that before being declared a reserve, the municipality adhered to the La Palma declaration (2007) of the Starlight Foundation and international organizations such as the European Union, which it recognizes as its own right. of Humanity access to starlight. “It is about being able to see the stars as our grandparents did until recently,” says the expert, who assures that Aras de los Olmos changed its lighting to monochromatic LEDs years ago orange colors that are respectful of the sky and non-polluting.
The town is also the headquarters of the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Valencia (UV), the oldest active university astronomical observatory in Spain, founded in 1909, and has two more observatories. Comets, eclipses, perseids, galaxies, constellations… Every astronomical phenomenon is the visual protagonist from these observatories and according to Vera, this autumn the transit of Mercury could be seen through the telescope, which only occurs a dozen times a century, in the that the shadow of the planet can be seen passing in front of the solar disk. These phenomena also call for romanticism and Vera points out that even three years ago he was able to witness a proposal for a hand while a couple was observing the rings of Saturn.
In 2017 the AstroAras association was also founded, which in March organized the first astronomical conferences in which the latest curiosities about the origin of the universe were revealed and to which almost a thousand people attended, according to Angelina Andrés. In addition, the UV organizes the Summer University there, which this year has completed its second edition and has been dedicated to studying the relationship between astronomy and development, between scientific advances and the possibilities that the universe brings to the human being. “And it is that to speak of astronomy is to speak of a field of research that exceeds academic borders due to its enormous potential for the sustainable development of rural areas of our territory”, explains the UV in the triptych of this program.
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