1. Hunting true nocturnal darkness in Europe
Where clouds still darken the sky
Bilder können je nach Vortrag entsprechend ersetzt werden.
Andreas Jechow
Ecohydrology
Light pollution, Remote sensing

2. My person - the past
Physicist studying the science of light (PhD 2009 in Photonics)
Lasers, Single photons and atoms, Imaging
First contact with „light pollution“ 2010 in Australia

3. My person - now
Since 2015 researcher on light pollution and remote sensing
IGB Berlin (Franz Hölker) and GFZ Potsdam (Chris Kyba)
ILES – Illuminating Lake ecosystems

4. Current research
Measure night sky brightness in context of ecological LP
Dynamics of skyglow – mainly clouds (research gap!)
Jechow et al. „Imaging and mapping the impact of clouds on skyglow with all-sky photometry“ Scientific Reports (2017)

5. The Light Pollution Initiative
„Hunting the true nocturnal darkness in Europe“
Subtitle: „Where clouds still darken the sky“
Motivation:
Skyglow in Europe is pretty bad
Neuchatel in Switzerland is 1360km away from pristine sky [1]
LP is growing on a global scale [2]
[1] Falchi et al. „The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness” Science Adv. (2016)
[2]Kyba et al. “Artificially lit surface of Earth at night increasing in radiance and extent” Science Adv. (2017)

6. The plan - LPI
Go to remote places and measure the night sky brightness with all-sky photometry for clear and cloudy skies
Idea: Clouds should darken the sky - if clear sky appears OK there might be local LP

7. Some preliminary results near Berlin
Images taken at LakeLab in August 2016
Idea: Clouds darken the sky – but also unravel some local LP source
clear
cloudy
0,0011 lx
0,00068 lx

8. Some preliminary results near Berlin
Images taken at LakeLab in August 2016
Differential photometry – compare before and after e.g. clear and cloudy

9. The plan - LPI
Identified several locations in Laponia (Finnland), Latvia (Region with migrating bats), Scottland, Russia and Ukraine (both difficult)

10. The plan - LPI
Go to remote places (in terms of no LP) and measure the night sky brightness with all-sky photometry for clear and cloudy skies
Contact to researchers in Latvia (bats), contact to researchers in Finnland and National Parks in Finnland
Plan to combine measurement about LP with dissemination via presentations in NP facilities
Possibly set up SQM and TESS at a remote site in Laponia (IGB has some ressearch on ice covered lakes going on)
Tools: DiCaLum /Zoltan Kollath) and Sky Quality Camera (SQC Andrej Mohar)
In the long run we want to motivate hobby astronomers to take and provide cloudy night data