Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute

Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologia dell'Inquinamento Luminoso

Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute

The night sky in the World Home Page
How we surveil the situation of the night sky with satellites
The DMSP satellite and its Operational Linescan System
The World Atlas of sea level artificial night sky brightness
Maps of the artificial night sky brightness
Maps of the total night sky brightness
Maps of the naked eye stellar visibility
Maps of the number of visible stars
Maps of the growth of light pollution
Maps of the night sky in selected sites
Our scientific papers
Our group of study
Light Pollution in Italy Web Site
Dep. of Astronomy University of Padova

National Geophysical Data Center - DMSP Nighttime Lights of the World

International Dark-Sky Association - DMSP nighttime  images

NASA - DMSP pages

Earth View

The night sky live

 

Copyright 2000, P. Cinzano, Thiene, Italy

 All rights reserved

 

The night sky in the World

Satellite monitoring of the artificial night sky brightness and the stellar visibility

 

The interest for the protection of the night sky from light pollution is growing every day. A global scale periodic monitoring of the situation is necessary.

Nighttime images of the Earth at night have been obtained from the Defense Metereological Satellite Program (DMSP) of the US Air Force since early '70. The first global image was obtained by Woodruff Sullivan in late '80. 

These images only showed the geographic distribution of the sources on the Earth surface because the satellite detectors were saturated by the strong flux emitted by them and no quantitative measurements were possible.

Since 1998 unsaturated data become available, allowing quantitative measurements of the upward light flux emitted by sources.

However satellite data don’t give any direct information on the effects of this light flux on the night sky due to light pollution propagation. The aim of our work is to study these effects. 

We measure the upward light flux of sources on the Earth surface based on DMSP satellite data and then we compute the effects on the night sky modelling the light propagation in the atmosphere. 

Depending on the kind of map, we account for many details like the scattering of light by molecules and aerosols, the extinction along light paths, the atmospheric aerosol content, the Earth curvature, the altitude of each area, the mountain screening, the observed sky direction, the natural sky brightness, the stellar extinction, the eye capability.

In this site you can find information on our work, maps, scientific publications.

 

 

Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologia dell'Inquinamento Luminoso

Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute

 

USA TODAY AWARD

Selected as a Hot Site in the 2001 Aug. 16th edition of USATODAY.com a free and highly popular news service on the World Wide Web.

GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY STAR AWARD

Griffith Observatory Star Award for the week of 2001 Sept. 16 - 22 for excellence in promoting astronomy to the public through the World Wide Web.

Reviewed by

Science, NetWatch, 293, 1407 (24 august 2001).

Reviewed by

Physics Today, Web Watch, 54, 10 (October 2001) 

 

 

The night sky in the World  Home page