Publications

In the latter half of 2012 the Arizona Department of Transportation completed installation of a roadway lighting upgrade on Highway 89-A in West Sedona, Arizona. This project was controversial in part because of the desire of many local residents to preserve the dark sky environment of the community. The project was delayed due to contentious arguments between environmental and development advocates. This project thus presented an interesting opportunity to test the issues of lighting project impacts on sky brightness by making quantitative photometric measurements of the community before and after the lighting installation. The authors incorporated this opportunity into the existing Light at Night Mapping Program as a third distinct Arizona community: LAN MAP 3. In this paper we report some of the preliminary findings of this study.

The “Sky Glow Network” (SkyGlowNet) is an internet connected depository of photometric light at night (LAN) data that are collected automatically by static, internet-enabled Sky Brightness Meters (iSBMs). The data are collected nightly at high temporal frequency and can be used to monitor extended areas of sky brightness on hourly, nightly, monthly, seasonal, and annual cycles over long periods of time. The photometry can be used for scientific and community planning purposes, as well as a powerful tool for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational outreach programs. The effective and efficient use of light in modern society has become an important and contentious issue that urgently requires better technical and societal understanding. It is important to us as astronomers, and will become increasingly relevant as dark sky areas shrink as a result of poorly implemented lighting. We outline the structure of SkyGlowNet, describe the iSBM unit, and discuss how to interact with the SkyGlowNet website. We discuss how these data can help us preserve observing sites in the future.

Light at Night Markup Language (LANML) is a standard, based upon XML, useful in acquiring, validating, transporting, archiving and analyzing multi-dimensional light at night (LAN) datasets of any size. The LANML standard can accommodate a variety of measurement scenarios including single spot measures, static time-series, web based monitoring networks, mobile measurements, and airborne measurements. LANML is human-readable, machine-readable, and does not require a dedicated parser. In addition LANML is flexible; ensuring future extensions of the format will remain backward compatible with analysis software. The XML technology is at the heart of communicating over the internet and can be equally useful at the desktop level, making this standard particularly attractive for web based applications, educational outreach and efficient collaboration between research groups.