Night sky brightness at sites from DMSP-OLS satellite measurements

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2004-10, Vol.353 (4), p.1107-1116
• Main Authors: Cinzano, P., Elvidge, C. D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: atmospheric effects; light pollution; scattering; site testing
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.08132.x

ABSTRACT We apply the sky brightness modelling technique introduced and developed by Roy Garstang to high‐resolution satellite measurements of upward artificial light flux carried out with the US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System and to GTOPO30 (a global digital elevation model by the US Geological Survey's EROS Data Centre) digital elevation data in order to predict the brightness distribution of the night sky at a given site in the primary astronomical photometric bands for a range of atmospheric aerosol contents. This method, based on global data and accounting for elevation, Earth curvature and mountain screening, allows the evaluation of sky glow conditions over the entire sky for any site in the world, to evaluate its evolution, to disentangle the contribution of individual sources in the surrounding territory and to identify the main contributing sources. Sky brightness, naked eye stellar visibility and telescope limiting magnitude are produced as three‐dimensional arrays, the axes of which are the position on the sky and the atmospheric clarity. We compare our results with available measurements.