After entering the relevant date, time and location, participants are shown a number of star maps. Anyone can submit observations through the Globe at Night web application on a desktop or smartphone. Globe at Night has been gathering data on stellar visibility every year since 2006. Until relatively recently, humans throughout history had an impressive view of the starry night sky, and the effect of this nightly spectacle is evident in ancient cultures, from the myths it inspired to the structures that were built in alignment with celestial bodies.ĭespite being a well-recognized issue, however, the changes in sky brightness over time are not well documented, particularly on a global scale. Furthermore, the loss of visible stars is a poignant loss of human cultural heritage. It also has an impact on human health and wildlife, since it disrupts the cyclical transition from sunlight to starlight that biological systems have evolved alongside. Light pollution is a familiar problem that has many detrimental effects, not only on the practice of astronomy. “At this rate of change, a child born in a location where 250 stars were visible would be able to see only abound100 by the time they turned 18,” said Christopher Kyba, a researcher at the German Research Centre for Geosciences and lead author of the paper detailing these results. The research reveals that skyglow is increasing more rapidly than shown in satellite measurements of Earth’s surface brightness at night. The data for this study came from crowd-sourced observations collected from around the world as part of Globe at Night, a program run by NSF’s NOIRLab and developed by NOIRLab astronomer Connie Walker. New citizen-science-based research sheds alarming light on the problem of ‘skyglow’ - the diffuse illumination of the night sky that is a form of light pollution. A new paper published in the journal Science concludes that the problem is getting rapidly worse. Unfortunately, growing light pollution has robbed about 30% of people around the globe and approximately 80% of people in the United States of the nightly view of their home galaxy. The study published in the journal Science showcases the unique contributions that citizen scientists can make in essential fields of research.įrom the glowing arc of the Milky Way to dozens of intricate constellations, the unaided human eye should be able to perceive several thousand stars on a clear, dark night. The study finds that, to human eyes, artificial lighting has dulled the night sky more rapidly than indicated by satellite measurements. NOIRLab’s Globe at Night educational program reveals how increasing light pollution is robbing us of the night sky.Ī startling analysis from Globe at Night - a citizen science program run by NSF’s NOIRLab - concludes that stars are disappearing from human sight at an astonishing rate. The numeric scale is similar to the one used by Globe at Night participants. This graphic illustrates how the greater the amount of light pollution, and therefore skyglow, the fewer the stars that are visible. And the farside’s vast South Pole–Aitken Basin, 2,500 km in diameter, randks among the very largest impact sites anywhere in the solar system.Light Pollution Impact 1 – From excellent dark sky (left) to inner city sky (right). On the lunar farside, for example, you can easily pick out the gigantic depressions like Hertzsprung, Korolev, Orientale, and Mare Moscoviense. This globe’s vivid display of topography makes it easy to pick out dozens of the huge impact basins that scar the Moon’s surface. ![]() LOLA determines terrain altitudes by firing pulses of near-infrared light and then measuring the roundtrip travel time of the reflections the accumulated data yield topographic maps. ![]() Sky & Telescope worked with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) team to create the base maps, which show details as small as 0.5 kilometer across. The new globe has about 850 labeled features. Impact basins and deep craters show up clearly in blue (the South Pole-Aitken Basin is particularly striking), whereas high peaks and rugged terrain are colored white, red, and orange. Sky & Telescope partnered with NASA to create a topographic Moon globe, color-coded to highlight dramatic variations in lunar elevations.
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