As a Londoner, Ive spent more than a years living under some of the most greatly polluted skies in Europe, and that hasnt stopped me from delighting in the stars and experiencing many special occasions in the sky. Light pollution makes the canvas of the sky brighter, so that some natural light sources fall below the contrast limit that makes them noticeable by eye. How can we figure out the restricting magnitude and measure sky darkness?The Great Square of Pegasus, revealed in the simulated image above, supplies a particularly helpful limit in which to perform a star count and determine your local sky quality.
As a Londoner, Ive invested more than a decade living under some of the most heavily polluted skies in Europe, and that hasnt stopped me from taking pleasure in the stars and witnessing lots of special events in the sky. Light pollution makes the canvas of the sky brighter, so that some natural light sources fall below the contrast threshold that makes them noticeable by eye.( Image credit: Tom Kerss/Stellarium) Aside from the Sun and Moon, everything else in the sky can be related to as a point source (a point of light) or a diffuse object (a patch of light). How can we figure out the restricting magnitude and procedure sky darkness?The Great Square of Pegasus, shown in the simulated image above, offers an especially useful boundary in which to perform a star count and measure your regional sky quality. The open source, totally free to use house planetarium software application Stellarium is capable of imitating the appearance of light contamination, allow you to anticipate how the stars will really appear in urban skies.
