Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance

摘要: The skyglow produced by artificial lights at night is one of the most dramatic anthropogenic modifications Earth's biosphere. GLOBE Night citizen science project allows individual observers to quantify using star maps showing different levels light pollution. We show that aggregated data depend strongly on and could be used track lighting changes worldwide. Naked eye time series can expected very stable, due slow pace human evolution. standard deviation an observation found 1.2 stellar magnitudes. Zenith estimates from “First World Atlas Artificial Sky Brightness” are tested a subset data. Although we find overestimates sky brightness in center large cities, its predictions for Milky Way visibility accurate.