Technical Reports

Light pollution and deteriorating sky quality have been of concern to astronomers for decades. In recent years that interest has extended to other groups including environmentalists, ecologists, health professionals, and urban planners. Many communities have implemented various versions of lighting codes that impose restrictions on new lighting, and on land and property developers with regard to lighting installations. To achieve compliance with these codes is not always easy, nor is it always clear what constitutes compliance, or violation. A key element that has emerged is the need for a variety of types of measurement of light at night (LAN), both baseline and ongoing monitoring measurements. In addition to complying with existing codes, a systematic means of measuring LAN could have considerable importance to epidemiological studies of the effects of LAN on human health. This latter may be particularly true with the prospect of fundamental changes in the spectral distribution of the lighting that envelops us all at night; for example, transitions from traditionally low color temperature lighting to higher energy blue light from LEDs. In this paper we describe work we have done in developing protocols monitoring LAN over urban areas using photometers mounted on aircraft.