Every lighthouse in Ireland, with accurate timings, flash patterns and colours

Every lighthouse in Ireland, with accurate timings, flash patterns and colours from ireland

37 comments

  15. Some of them don’t rotate anymore.

    The big fresnel lantern has been replaced by a blinking LED.

    Just as bright over distance. But not as pretty.

    I’d love to spend a few nights on the Fastnet. Especially if there’s a big storm going.

  18. This is excellent.

    I’m still gutted that because of electrification and automation (etc) the job of being a lighthouse keeper has died out (the last manned lighthouses becoming automated in the late 90’s in Ireland and Britain). For the job of lighthouse keeper had long been one of my dream jobs growing up (I’m 45 now) — although, yes, I’m here right now on social media, I’m a genuinely antisocial fecker and I love the idea of living on my own on the coast, on some remote rocky outcrop miles from civilisation, paid to live in and maintain the light for the night (trim the wicks, replenish fuel, wind clockworks, clean lenses and windows, etc).

    I know, as a job it clearly wasn’t even half as easy as I’m making out and I’m being a romantic twat. But still, even so, I think it would have suited me down to the rocky ground.

  20. Grew up several miles north of New Ross out in the sticks. We could see Hook head on a clear night.

  21. I love this. If I could, I’d probably project that onto my ceiling at night and just look at all the slowly spinning lights until I drift off to sleep and dream about lighthouses.

  22. Years ago I got a tour of a lighthouse in Cork (in about 1980). I was shocked at how miniscule the actual lamp was. I think was either kerosene or gas then, but definitely wasn’t electric. The fresnel lenses were *enormous,* but you could rotate the entire set of lenses and their heavy frame with a single push from your finger as the whole mechanism was floating on a vat of mercury!

  24. This is BS, I just swam out into Dublin bay and checked and the timing is several mlliseconds off AT LEAST, even taking into account latency from the LTE, webserver and the refresh rate of the OLED screen in my phone.

  25. Love a lighthouse, can see one from my house in the distance. Don’t know why, always feel like they have a kind of magic / mystery to them.

  26. As an Englishman here in Ireland, this looks like a really poor video game way of stopping me and my countryman from invading.

    So many gaps.

  27. This is actually a video from when Ireland was a prize on an American TV gameshow in the 1980s.

    e. Just noticed the lights don’t all make full rotation; is the timing truly accurate? Is there a *full* version?

  28. Once you have a chart you can use the lights that you can see to triangulate your position.

    The chart will tell you the occulting of the light and the arc of it so as you would know if you are in it’s arc.

    Not needed much nowadays but it does give you the satisfaction of knowing your GPS is correct.

    Most light houses would have a screen on the land side of the light.

    In the past I have used the [Conningbeg Light ship](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/one-of-last-lightships-finally-withdrawn-from-service-1.1197799) to guide us to shore but that is now replaced like most lightships that were in use around Ireland.

    The [Commissioners of Irish Lights](https://www.irishlights.ie/) are all Island based

  35. Looks lovely, Achill doesn’t have a functioning lighthouse it’s actually on Clare Island and there isn’t one in the sea NW of Achill head either. Still a great idea and visual though!

  36. Why are they all on the perimeter of the island?

    Another example of how people living on the coast get more than the rest of us who have to live inland.

  37. So what’s up with St John’s Point? (In the North, East coast)
    It appears to only point across the bay. Not out into the Irish sea. All the others rotate the whole way round

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