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100's of scientific research papers on light pollution


From bird calls to surveying light pollution to cancer hazard assessment, you're bound to find what you're looking for in this database of peer-reviewed literature on artificial light at night.



They are part of the data base owned by SKYGLOW BERLIN


Original Skyglow Berlin Proposal

Lighting the night is one of the most dramatic changes that humans have made to the Earth. With the help of school students and some of our project backers, we will quantify the brightness of the sky in Berlin and Brandenburg. The results of this project will be extremely useful for testing simulations of the sky brightness worldwide.


What's the project about?

During the time when life evolved, the sky was bright with stars on clear nights and very dark on cloudy nights. Now, thanks to waste light from our cities, the sky is often too bright to see the stars, and cloudy nights are up to thousands of times brighter than is natural. The goal of the Skyglow Berlin project is to quantify the brightness of the sky in the city of Berlin and the state of Brandenburg.


Dark nights are necessary for many animals. They use darkness to protect themselves from predators, for example mice hiding from owls. Many animals also make use of lunar cycles. If natural darkness is lost, ecosystems are affected. Too much light at night or light exposure at the wrong times can even make animals, including humans, unwell (think of how you are affected by jetlag). The size of the effect on ecosystems is not well understood, because we don't have good models for how bright the night sky is, particularly on cloudy nights.


The data obtained in this project will eventually be used to calibrate computer programs that simulate the sky brightness for the entire Earth. Berlin is an ideal place to do these measurements, because we can study the effects of a single bright city without having to worry about other nearby cities spoiling the results. In places like the Netherlands or the East coast of the USA, you can never get away from the skyglow.


The project works by providing students with light meters that can accurately measure the brightness of the sky, as well as how many stars are visible. We hope that by getting students to go outside during the night, they will gain experience with the natural night that was a part of growing up just a few generations ago. With luck, this chance to experience the night might encourage some of them to become lighting designers, astronomers, or nocturnal animal researchers.

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