The New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness | Hacker News Reader

The New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness

cires.colorado.edu

70 pointsnateberkopec16 comments

This is really poor resolution and less useful than the many previously existing tools that do the same thing. I like shooting pictures of the Milky Way so dark skies are a must and I use this map most frequently:

http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/

Is Dark Sky Finder US-only? I don't see anything over Europe or Asia while OP seems to offer global coverage.

From the Dark Sky Finder page:

"This page was written when I had more free time than I do now. It's far from perfect, and I've been provided with many excellent suggestions for improvements (map coverage of Europe, an Android version for mobile devices, etc.). Sadly, I just don't have the time to implement these suggestions. If you're a web developer with an interest in astronomy, please feel free to contact me ... "

[Eastern] Europe has little dark sky, but here is a similar source that has global coverage (the advantage of the other is suggested viewing sites, this one is just a map):

http://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html

Based in (imho) the best city in the US: http://darksky.org

I never realized how awesome it is to have almost no street lights until I moved here. It's wonderful. You get to keep your night vision when you go on a walk.

Am I missing something, or did you not mention the actual location of "the best city in the US"?

Tucson, AZ. Home of the International Dark-Sky Association, The University Of Arizona and it's Mirror Lab. Wrapped by ~9k mountains on 3 sides (Lemmon, Rincon, and Wrightson). We have damn good thunderstorms too.

https://vimeo.com/107450172

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVS5DekZ7VQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3glyRZLZAR0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41gM6lwAOo4

I was just in Mitzpe Ramon, IL with my family on a moonless weekend night. It is supposed to be the darkest point in Israel. The viewing was fairly good that night.

And yet my kids were disappointed upon seeing the Milky Way. They'd expected it to look like what they've seen in pictures, like shown in this NPR article on the subject:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/10/481545778/...

I'd even forewarned them not to expect the night sky to look like it does in photos they've seen of it. :-(

Interesting to look at the North Sea (off Scotland for those not familiar). The magnitude of the light pollution from the oils rigs seems extremely high, comparable to large cities. Seems unlikely.

Cool project regardless!

Oil rigs producing as much light a large city does not seem unlikely at all to me. The Prudhoe Bay oil field in the north of Alaska has always stood out in its disproportionate brightness and size in any night-view of the earth I've seen (and light pollution is the least of our worries when it comes to this place's environmental impact).

That being said, oil fields being overly visible might be a symptom that they used data based on satellites capturing slightly lower frequencies (near infrared) rather than precisely representing visible light. I know I've seen night maps of the earth that turned out to be based on near-IR imagery.

A hotspot on the map highlighting Mt Yasur Volcano, Tanna, Vanuatu is an example of the near-IR. No light pollution there.

Interesting to see that the Randstad area i live in ( Zoetermeer) is one of the biggest hotspots. We have a lot of greenhouse farming around here where they take the CO2 from the petrochemical plants in Rotterdam harbour, pipe them in the greenhouses and run lights during the night to make the plants and flowers grow as fast as possible.

When my English friend came over he was amazed at how light it was out here, i had to tell him i hadn't seen stars at night ever when i was out at night around this area.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHyQx4eckkc < about a minute or two into this you see the yellow hue on the sky, this not first rays of light from the sun hitting the clouds, its light pollution.

What on earth is going on in northern Alaska? I feel like that has to be a data error, because there is literally nothing up there. I verified on Google Earth... Couple microscopic towns hundreds of miles apart, nothing like the map is showing.

Update: Prudhoe Bat / Oil Fields

Is there an explanation for the large hotspot to the Northwest of Bismarck, ND?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota_oil_boom

Baaken crude oil wells are currently flaring all of their gas.

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