A keen astronomer from Goytre made an unusual request to Monmouthshire Council last weekend, in anticipation of witnessing a major meteor shower.

15-year-old Amy Jones loves to view the skies at night but has a major problem - a bright lamp situated immediately outside her house. So when she discovered that a Draconid meteor shower was scheduled for the second weekend in October she contacted MCC's Street Lighting Officer, Roger Joy, to ask if the offending light could be switched off allowing her to view the skies unhindered. Mr Joy said: "We made Amy aware that turning off the light for the whole weekend could present a potential safety hazard for pedestrians and drivers so we restricted the operation to between 7.30pm and 11.30pm on Friday (7th) and Saturday (8th).

"This allowed most residents to arrive home from work or leisure with the light on. In addition I contacted neighbours and police to inform them of the situation. Lights in Goytre are controlled by the Harvard Monitoring system so it was a fairly simple process to adjust the timing".

Amy said: "I would like to say a big thank you to the council for turning the street light off - it helped me greatly. I consider astronomy as a career so this was a big help. Thankfully, the sky was clear on Friday, so I saw some meteors and on Saturday, I managed to see a fireball before the sky completely clouded over."