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Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance

The skyglow produced by artificial lights at night is one of the most dramatic anthropogenic modifications of Earth's biosphere. The GLOBE at Night citizen science project allows individual observers to quantify skyglow using star maps showing different levels of light pollution. We show that a...

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Autores principales: Kyba, Christopher C. M., Wagner, Janna M., Kuechly, Helga U., Walker, Constance E., Elvidge, Christopher D., Falchi, Fabio, Ruhtz, Thomas, Fischer, Jürgen, Hölker, Franz
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655480/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23677222
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep01835
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author Kyba, Christopher C. M.
Wagner, Janna M.
Kuechly, Helga U.
Walker, Constance E.
Elvidge, Christopher D.
Falchi, Fabio
Ruhtz, Thomas
Fischer, Jürgen
Hölker, Franz
author_facet Kyba, Christopher C. M.
Wagner, Janna M.
Kuechly, Helga U.
Walker, Constance E.
Elvidge, Christopher D.
Falchi, Fabio
Ruhtz, Thomas
Fischer, Jürgen
Hölker, Franz
author_sort Kyba, Christopher C. M.
collection PubMed
description The skyglow produced by artificial lights at night is one of the most dramatic anthropogenic modifications of Earth's biosphere. The GLOBE at Night citizen science project allows individual observers to quantify skyglow using star maps showing different levels of light pollution. We show that aggregated GLOBE at Night data depend strongly on artificial skyglow, and could be used to track lighting changes worldwide. Naked eye time series can be expected to be very stable, due to the slow pace of human eye evolution. The standard deviation of an individual GLOBE at Night observation is found to be 1.2 stellar magnitudes. Zenith skyglow estimates from the “First World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness” are tested using a subset of the GLOBE at Night data. Although we find the World Atlas overestimates sky brightness in the very center of large cities, its predictions for Milky Way visibility are accurate.
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spelling pubmed-36554802013-05-20 Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance Kyba, Christopher C. M. Wagner, Janna M. Kuechly, Helga U. Walker, Constance E. Elvidge, Christopher D. Falchi, Fabio Ruhtz, Thomas Fischer, Jürgen Hölker, Franz Sci Rep Article The skyglow produced by artificial lights at night is one of the most dramatic anthropogenic modifications of Earth's biosphere. The GLOBE at Night citizen science project allows individual observers to quantify skyglow using star maps showing different levels of light pollution. We show that aggregated GLOBE at Night data depend strongly on artificial skyglow, and could be used to track lighting changes worldwide. Naked eye time series can be expected to be very stable, due to the slow pace of human eye evolution. The standard deviation of an individual GLOBE at Night observation is found to be 1.2 stellar magnitudes. Zenith skyglow estimates from the “First World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness” are tested using a subset of the GLOBE at Night data. Although we find the World Atlas overestimates sky brightness in the very center of large cities, its predictions for Milky Way visibility are accurate. Nature Publishing Group 2013-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC3655480/ /pubmed/23677222 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep01835 Text en Copyright © 2013, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
spellingShingle Article
Kyba, Christopher C. M.
Wagner, Janna M.
Kuechly, Helga U.
Walker, Constance E.
Elvidge, Christopher D.
Falchi, Fabio
Ruhtz, Thomas
Fischer, Jürgen
Hölker, Franz
Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance
title Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance
title_full Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance
title_fullStr Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance
title_full_unstemmed Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance
title_short Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance
title_sort citizen science provides valuable data for monitoring global night sky luminance
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655480/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23677222
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep01835
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