Journal
JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE SPECTROSCOPY & RADIATIVE TRANSFER
Volume 181, Issue -, Pages 24-32Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2016.02.005
Keywords
Light pollution; Radiometry; Photometry
Categories
Funding
- ILES project - Leibniz Association, Germany [SAW-2015-IGB-1]
- Verlust der Nacht project - Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany [BMBF-033L038A]
- EU COST Action (Loss of the Night Network) [ES1204]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We report luminance measurements of the summer night sky at a field site on a freshwater lake in northeastern Germany (Lake Stechlin) to evaluate the amount of artificial skyglow from nearby and distant towns in the context of a planned study on light pollution. The site is located about 70 km north of Berlin in a rural area possibly belonging to one of the darkest regions in Germany. Continuous monitoring of the zenith sky luminance between June and September 2015 was conducted utilizing a Sky Quality Meter. With this device, typical values for clear nights in the range of 21.5-21.7 mag(SQM)/arcsec(2) were measured, which is on the order of the natural sky brightness during starry nights. On overcast nights, values down to 22.84 mag(SQM)/arcsec(2) were obtained, which is about one third as bright as on clear nights. The luminance measured on clear nights as well as the darkening with the presence of clouds indicates that there is very little influence of artificial skyglow on the zenith sky brightness at this location. Furthermore, fish-eye lens sky imaging luminance photometry was performed with a digital single-lens reflex camera on a clear night in the absence of moonlight. The photographs unravel several distant towns as possible sources of light pollution on the horizon. However, the low level of artificial skyglow makes the field site at Lake Stechlin an excellent location to study the effects of skyglow on a lake ecosystem in a controlled fashion. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available