colleagues,
Has any member of this forum downloaded the kmz file (30 arcsecond gridded values of modelled zenith nighttime radiance on moonless, cloudless nights at around 0100 hours), available as supplementary information for the paper by Falchi, Cinzano, Duriscoe et al. (2016) - the paper "The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness"?
The one reply to the announcement of the publication of this paper in a post to this forum in June was that the maps in the paper (each of which covers one continent) were too small to be of much use to amateur astronomers.
The gridded supplementary data are for "squares" of approximately 775 to 900 metres in longitude by 925 metres in latitude for Australia.
A zoomable map is what I have in mind. If no one has done this, I could be persuaded, with the map accessible via a website.
This atlas was based on models of the artificial component of zenith sky brightness by integrating all contributions to downward light flux (as measured by the upward radiance measured by satellite between May and December 2014 (excluding July)) for dispersion of light from sources up to 195 km away via the atmosphere, and thus represents what the ground-based astronomer can expect. (The atlas accords well with the SQM data available to the authors at the time they prepared the paper, chiefly from the US and Europe, as well as a few measurements from sites in Australia.)
In contrast, the zoomable maps at
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#...ayers=B0TFFFFF for each year between 2013 and 2016 show the radiance UPWARD, averaged for suitable data, as measured on the satellite. These don't account for diffusion of light and so have sharp boundaries at the edge of suburban areas, whereas the light-polluted region stretches well beyond the last street light.
Jim Irish (with interests in astronomy in Melbourne, Queensland and China, and with a Unihedron Sky Quality Meter)
