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

 

Maps of the number of visible stars

The maps of the number of visible stars show how many stars are visible in the sky. They are obtained from the maps of the naked eye limiting magnitude. The limiting magnitude can be related to the number of star which are visible in the sky but a detailed computation requires an evaluation of the stellar visibility in each direction of the sky and not only at the zenith, accounting for the increase of the stellar extinction with the zenith distance. This requires an incredible amount of computational time. This kind of maps are still in progress. Here below a preliminary version.

number of visible stars

Preliminary map of the number of visible stars in Europe. Copyright Cinzano/ISTIL 2005

Maps of the loss of visible stars 

The maps of the loss of visible stars are simply obtained by difference between the map of the number of visible stars and a map of the same quantity evaluated assuming no light pollution in the area. Like the maps of the loss of naked eye limiting magnitude, these maps shows better the effects of the light pollution but are less useful to evaluate the capability of the population to see the stars than the maps of the number of visible stars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The night sky in the World  Home page