Interesting websites on light pollution

[Jonk]

Whilst doing some browsing, I've stumbled across some light pollution websites, some of which I've not seen, and I'm not sure if they have all been shared on SGL before so I thought I'd start - please feel free to add links to any other light pollution map websites you may have bookmarked or know about.

https://www.hillarys.co.uk/skyglow/

"Mapping Light from Space:
Using images from overhead satellites, we looked into how bright our night skies appear from space, and how this has changed over the last 22 years.
We used images from two different satellites, the Operational Linescan System (OLS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) to calculate the brightness of the night sky."

http://www.nightblight.cpre.org.uk/maps/

"Each pixel shows the level of radiance (night lights) shining up into the night sky. These have been categorised into colour bands to distinguish between different light levels."

Zoom into your area to see what the latest maps say about light pollution.

https://blue-marble.de/nightlights/2017

Uses a 'night' overlay in addition to satellite view found on other mapping websites.

https://avex-asso.org/dossiers/pl/europe-2016/google-map-fausse-couleur/index.html

Uses a false colour overlay to highlight light pollution. Zoom in too far, the overlay switches off however.

http://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html

Old data so not that great, uses a colour overlay with poor resolution when zoomed in.

https://i.imgur.com/RDvKGhf.jpg

Unknown source, just a large UK map with colour overlay.

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=geographic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),VIIRS_Black_Marble,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines(hidden),VIIRS_SNPP_DayNightBand_ENCC(hidden),VIIRS_Night_Lights(hidden)&t=2016-12-25&z=3&v=-33.8537999020307,18.157836234850183,62.19307509796927,63.20682048577659

Nasa's 'Black Marble' which has a whole host or layers, including satellite imagery of LP.

https://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2017/lights-on-lights-out/index.html

Not really a zoom in and check your LP locally, but interesting nonetheless.

[Tim]

IT. IS. DEPRESSING

Here's some hard facts and statistics:

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/3/11/e1701528.full.pdf

As they say, read it and weep

[Thalestris24]

Yeah, I already know how bad my lp is... Having a lp map would be useful if I was looking and able to find somewhere to move to. But I'm not

Louise

[BinocularSky]

http://www.need-less.org.uk/

and, of course:
http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/
 

[Jeff-Colorado]

Some great links, and yes, a little depressing. Perhaps the most stark contrast on Earth is along the border between NK and SK (Korea). NK has some very dark skies, I'm sure.

Some national parks out here in the states have dark skies and have begun to advertise that fact. The darkest skies I've ever seen were deep inside Yellowstone National Park.

[PeterW]

.... but the U.K. IS getting better, unlike a lot of other places. 

https://trendy-lights-dot-ee-demos.appspot.com/ uses the same data, green is a reduction, red is an increase. 

The VIIRS data is a bit noisy and inconsistent from year to year(I wanted to go looking for closer observing locations), the trend is more robust. I do hope the trend continues, better fixtures and more switchoff /dimming. It would be interesting if someone had a system that measured the light levels at an angle from the vertical... more realistic for the light that escapes close to the horizontal from cities.

i once found a simulation that showed the dramatic shrinkage in light polluted area and resultant improvement in limiting magnitude, just from using properly cut off fixtures.

Not that urban observers will notice a whole lot.... Milky Way never going to be visible.

 

PEter

[Joel Shepherd]

This is maybe more inspirational than hard data, but it will still make you stop and think: https://skyglowproject.com/

The two photographers who've driven the project have given talks across the US ... not sure if they've done any talks elsewhere.

[Mr Spock]

My sky has gotten much worse. I used to be able to see the milky way and M31 quite clearly, albeit on the western side of the house. Now all I have is a sea of grey thanks to the new LED lights Sheffield has. Any kind of DS viewing is gone for me and I have to go into the Peak District to see anything

[Gina]

Yes, my sky is worse now too but I did make the best of it a few years ago when it was much better.

[Shelster1973]

Having just moved am now finding different issues with my lagging location of new back garden. 

Biggest one is the two led street lights that are at the back along a footpath.  Light from them streams into the back garden and destroys any night adjustment, plus stray light streams into any scope put up.

Decided to contact the council to see if they could do anything about it, expecting to hear nothing back after many months and if I did, two get some sort of fob off from them.  Sent online report at 1300 today and was very surprised to get the following response back today at 1630ish

Re: street lights, Byron Avenue

Thank you for reporting the fault with the street lighting in Burns Lane. We have sent through the fault to our contractor to fix the fault with a shade.

We thank you once again for taking the time to bring this to our attention. Feedback from the public is gratefully received to allow us to pick up safety issues that occur outside of our regular inspections.
 

 

Plymouth Highways

Plymouth City Council

[PeterW]

Do keep us informed if they change anything. I have a light hat intermittently doesn’t work... not going to tell anyone!

Peterw

[GeorgeLiv]

The problem with a lot of light-pollution maps is that they are spectrally blind. For example, if you look at the cropped satellite image of Chicago (2016), you can see first, that the sodium lights are more offensive than the  LED or old Mercury-vapour neighborhoods, and the spectrum of each is quite different. Some filters might work well with one type of lighting, or they could be useless with another lighted area. Check out yourlightpollution.com (more work in progress).