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Register a new userUsing all-sky differential photometry to investigate how nocturnal clouds darken the night sky in rural areas
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Artificial light at night has affected most of the natural nocturnal landscapes worldwide and the subsequent light pollution has diverse effects on flora, fauna and human well-being. To evaluate the environmental impacts of light pollution, it is crucial to understand both the natural and artificial components of light at night under all weather conditions. The night sky brightness for clear skies is relatively well understood and a reference point for a lower limit is defined. However, no such reference point exists for cloudy skies. While some studies have examined the brightening of the night sky by clouds in urban areas, the published data on the (natural) darkening by clouds is very sparse. Knowledge of reference points for the illumination of natural nocturnal environments however, is essential for experimental design and ecological modeling to assess the impacts of light pollution. Here we use differential all-sky photometry with a commercial digital camera to investigate how clouds darken sky brightness at two rural sites. The spatially resolved data enables us to identify and study the nearly unpolluted parts of the sky and to set an upper limit on ground illumination for overcast nights at sites without light pollution.
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Artificial skyglow is constantly growing on a global scale, with potential ecological consequences ranging up to affecting biodiversity. To understand these consequences, worldwide mapping of skyglow for all weather conditions is urgently required. In particular, the amplification of skyglow by clouds needs to be studied, as clouds can extend the reach of skyglow into remote areas not affected by light pollution on clear nights. Here we use commercial digital single lens reflex cameras with fisheye lenses for all-sky photometry. We track the reach of skyglow from a peri-urban into a remote area on a clear and a partly cloudy night by performing transects from the Spanish town of Balaguer towards Montsec Astronomical Park. From one single all-sky image, we extract zenith luminance, horizontal and scalar illuminance. While zenith luminance reaches near-natural levels at 5km distance from the town on the clear night, similar levels are only reached at 27km on the partly cloudy night. Our results show the dramatic increase of the reach of skyglow even for moderate cloud coverage at this site. The powerful and easy-to-use method promises to be widely applicable for studies of ecological light pollution on a global scale also by non-specialists in photometry.
This paper presents optical night sky brightness measurements from the stratosphere using CCD images taken with the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT). The data used for estimating the backgrounds were obtained during three commissioning flights in 2016, 2018, and 2019 at altitudes ranging from 28 km to 34 km above sea level. For a valid comparison of the brightness measurements from the stratosphere with measurements from mountain-top ground-based observatories (taken at zenith on the darkest moonless night at high Galactic and high ecliptic latitudes), the stratospheric brightness levels were zodiacal light and diffuse Galactic light subtracted, and the airglow brightness was projected to zenith. The stratospheric brightness was measured around 5.5 hours, 3 hours, and 2 hours before the local sunrise time in 2016, 2018, and 2019 respectively. The $B$, $V$, $R$, and $I$ brightness levels in 2016 were 2.7, 1.0, 1.1, and 0.6 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ darker than the darkest ground-based measurements. The $B$, $V$, and $R$ brightness levels in 2018 were 1.3, 1.0, and 1.3 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ darker than the darkest ground-based measurements. The $U$ and $I$ brightness levels in 2019 were 0.1 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ brighter than the darkest ground-based measurements, whereas the $B$ and $V$ brightness levels were 0.8 and 0.6 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ darker than the darkest ground-based measurements. The lower sky brightness levels, stable photometry, and lower atmospheric absorption make stratospheric observations from a balloon-borne platform a unique tool for astronomy. We plan to continue this work in a future mid-latitude long duration balloon flight with SuperBIT.
In 2018, Solar Cycle 24 entered into a solar minimum phase. During this period, 11 million zenithal night sky brightness (NSB) data were collected at different dark sites around the planet, including astronomical observatories and natural protected areas, with identical broadband Telescope Encoder and Sky Sensor photometers (based on the Unihedron Sky Quality Meter TSL237 sensor). A detailed observational review of the multiple effects that contribute to the NSB measurement has been conducted with optimal filters designed to avoid brightening effects by the Sun, the Moon, clouds, and other astronomical sources (the Galaxy and zodiacal light). The natural NSB has been calculated from the percentiles for 44 different photometers by applying these new filters. The pristine night sky was measured to change with an amplitude of 0.1 mag/arcsec$^2$ in all the photometers, which is suggested to be due to NSB variations on scales of up to months and to be compatible with semiannual oscillations. We report the systematic observation of short-time variations in NSB on the vast majority of the nights and find these to be related to airglow events forming above the mesosphere.
The photometric sky quality of Mt. Shatdzhatmaz, the site of Sternberg Astronomical Institute Caucasian Observatory 2.5 m telescope, is characterized here by the statistics of the night-time sky brightness and extinction. The data were obtained as a by-product of atmospheric optical turbulence measurements with the MASS (Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor) device conducted in 2007--2013. The factors biasing night-sky brightness measurements are considered and a technique to reduce their impact on the statistics is proposed. The single-band photometric estimations provided by MASS are easy to transform to the standard photometric bands. The median moonless night-sky brightness is 22.1, 21.1, 20.3, and 19.0 mag per square arcsec for the $B$, $V$, $R$, and $I$ spectral bands, respectively. The median extinction coefficients for the same photometric bands are 0.28, 0.17, 0.13, and 0.09 mag. The best atmospheric transparency is observed in winter.
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