Citizen Scientists Accurately Measure Brightness of Night Sky

Artificial lights strongly overlap with the concentrations of Earth's population, showing the locations of light pollution. (Image Source: Wikipedia.org )

 

May 21, 2013 — A team of researchers from Germany, Italy, and the USA have shown that observations of stellar visibility by citizen scientists accurately measure the brightness of the night sky. The researchers published their results May 16 in Nature Publishing Group's open access journal, Scientific Reports. The researchers hope that such data can eventually be used to track changes in artificial night sky brightness, also known as skyglow, worldwide.

The data the researchers analyzed came from the GLOBE at Night citizen science project, which is coordinated by the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

More - Link >>> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130521105408.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fspace_time+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Space+%26+Time+News%29

Sources: Freie Universitaet Berlin, ScienceDaily.com .

More Citizen Science Projects: Link >>> http://buhlplanetarium2.tripod.com/FAQ/citizenscience.html

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