The Measure of Light Pollution and the Populations of Cities

Upgren, A. R.

doi:10.1017/s0252921100003754

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The light pollution has become one of the city problems to be solved urgently [13] . Meanwhile, the scientific ways to detect and evaluation the light pollution are the necessary condition for the study of the urban light pollution and the effective measures to protect the night sky [14] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study on the Change Characters of the Urban Spatial Light Pollution from Ground to Zenith

Liu¹,

Baogang²,

Hao³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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As the problem of light pollution becomes more serious, more and more scholars pay attention to this issue and carry out related research. In the perspective of cities, the measurements of light pollution mainly focus on the brightness of the sky or artificial lighting on the ground. However, there is lack of research on the whole urban space. With the two-dimensional brightness analyses, this paper processes the changes of the light environment of the whole urban space into image quantization. It gets the 3D and 2D light environment changes of luminance distribution, color temperature distribution and chromaticity in the three space layers, the ground layer, the urban canopy layer and the sky layer, from dusk with natural light to night with artificial lighting completely. It is found that the brightness difference between the light environments among the three city levels gradually reduces with the measuring time, and the final values maintain at 0.11~0.25 cd/m2. In the ground layer, the light environment is mainly affected by the lighting facilities, and vegetation can prevent the light from scattering up. The light environment of the urban canopy layer is the brightest in the whole city space and has the largest influence on the sky layer. The color concentrates in the range of yellow and red. The color temperature near the ground distributes in 3000K~15000K, and near the sky distributes in 2300K~2700K which is warmer than the natural night sky. The sky brightness of Dalian city is about 951 times than the natural night sky. 

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study on the Change Characters of the Urban Spatial Light Pollution from Ground to Zenith

Liu¹,

Baogang²,

Hao³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…5,6 However, the past decades have seen the rapid expansion of many countries due to urbanisation, increased population density and economic development, thus increasing the region influenced by artificial light that has become an unappreciated characteristic of cities, towns and transport networks worldwide. [7][8][9] Sky glow occurs when artificial light from cities interacts with the constituents of the atmosphere, aerosols and water molecules located basically at the troposphere level. The problem is well known as it is a central environmental issue in the new global economy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A microcontroller-based system for automated and continuous sky glow measurements with the use of digital single-lens reflex cameras

Lamphar

Kundracík

2014

Lighting Research & Technology

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In recent years, the scientific community has shown an increased interest in sky glow research. This has revealed an increased need for automated technology that enables continuous evaluation of sky glow. As a result, a reliable low-cost platform has been developed and constructed for automating sky glow measurement. The core of the system is embedded software and hardware managed by a microcontroller with ARM architecture. A monolithic photodiode transimpedance amplifier is used to allow linear light measurement. Data from the diode are collected and used to arrange the exposure time of every image captured by the digital single-lens reflex camera. This proposal supports experimenters by providing a low-cost system to analyse sky glow variations overnight without a human interface.

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“…For example, portable visual photometers have been designed and used with some success. Pike & Berry (1978) have described a simple visual photometer and Upgren (1991) has designed and built several of these devices using their design. The replicability of their measures has made them useful for a number of purposes.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…To the north and northeast lie the brightly lit center of Middletown and the city and suburbs of Hartford. The region is described in a recent review of city populations (Upgren 1991) and the site, called Laurel Hill, is one of the two mapped and covered in detail in that study, the other being the Van Vleck Observatory located on the Wesleyan campus. The Laurel Hill (LH) site is located in latitude 41°31'39" north and longitude 72°40'57" west at an elevation of 67 meters; the corresponding data for the Van Vleck Observatory (WO) are41°33'18"north, 72°39'38" west, and 65 meters.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…He calculates a zenith brightness of 18.7 for the WO site, in close agreement with the observed value of 18.5. At LH the dominance of central Middletown and Wesleyan over several other nearby communities is reduced, and modeling the skyglow there is more difficult as both Garstang (1989) and Upgren (1991) have noted. Nonetheless, the figure of 20.5 for LH can be taken as fairly firm.…”

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Night-sky brightness from the visibility of stars near the horizon

Upgren¹

1991

PASP

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Hundreds of naked-eye observations of bright stars near the southern horizon have been made on clear moonless nights over the interval 1977-91. They reveal a consistency in their visibility from one season or year to another, but a deterioration over the entire time interval reveals a possible increase in light pollution and possibly air pollution as well. The method is constrained to the sky near the northern and southern horizons where stars remain at near constant altitude over a suitable time interval, but the repeatability assures that it is sound. The limiting magnitude is given as a function of zenith distance, and color and seasonal effects do not appear to influence the results.

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The Measure of Light Pollution and the Populations of Cities

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Study on the Change Characters of the Urban Spatial Light Pollution from Ground to Zenith

Study on the Change Characters of the Urban Spatial Light Pollution from Ground to Zenith

A microcontroller-based system for automated and continuous sky glow measurements with the use of digital single-lens reflex cameras

Night-sky brightness from the visibility of stars near the horizon

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