Measuring and modelling light pollution at the Zselic Starry Sky Park

Abstract

One of the first 'International Dark-sky Parks' in Europe was established at the Zselic Landscape Protection Area in Hungary. A special monitoring program has been carrying on to survey the quality of the night sky using 'Sky Quality Meters' and DSLR cameras. The main conclusion of our measurements is that the local villages have only a minimal effect on the quality of the sky. There are light-domes due to the neighbouring cities only close to the horizon, the main source of obtrusive light is the city of Kaposvár. The anthropogenic component of zenith luminance of the night sky is obtained as the function of the distance from the city centre of Kaposvár. Our data were modelled by radiation transfer calculations. These results can help to draw attention to the energy emitted useless to the space and to protect our nocturnal landscape of nature parks for the next generations.