The night sky brightness at Potsdam-Babelsberg including overcast and moonlit conditions

Autor(en)

Johannes Puschnig, Axel Schwope, Thomas Posch, Robert Schwarz

Abstrakt

We analyze the results of 2 years (2011-2012) of night sky photometry performed at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam-Babelsberg. This institute is located 23km to the southwest of the center of Berlin. Our measurements have been performed with a Sky Quality Meter. We find night sky brightness values ranging from 16.5 to 20.3mag

_SQMarcsec

^-2; the latter value corresponds to 4.8 times the natural zenithal night sky brightness. We focus on the influence of clouds and of the moon on the night sky brightness. It turns out that Potsdam-Babelsberg, despite its proximity to Berlin, still shows a significant correlation of the night sky brightness with the lunar phases. However, the light-pollution-enhancing effect of clouds dominates the night sky brightness by far: overcast nights (up to 16.5mag

_SQMarcsec

^-2) are much brighter than clear full moon nights (18-18.5mag

_SQMarcsec

^-2).

Organisation(en)

Institut für Astrophysik

Externe Organisation(en)

Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam, Stockholm University

Journal

Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer

Band

139

Seiten

76-81

Anzahl der Seiten

6

ISSN

0022-4073

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2013.12.011

Publikationsdatum

05-2014

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103004 Astrophysik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Radiation, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Spectroscopy

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/5f26ba55-5b88-4a57-82b6-cfb61126811e