The IoT implementation on the night sky brightness measurement in Banjar using the sky quality meter

Abstract

There are number of factors that must be considered for observing the celestial bodies. One of them is the night sky brightness (NSB). The Sky Quality Meter (SQM) is employed to measure the night sky brightness. The device can be controlled by implementing a control system based on Internet Of Thing (IoT) to assist the data acquisition. The hardware is Raspberry pi as an interface and SQM-LU as a sensor. PySQM was employed as the multi-platform software designed to read, store, and plot data from SQM-LU. There are two types of data. They are the text data and graphical data. Both data can be accessed through the internet network. Hence, the Night Sky Brightness data acquisition can be made remotely through the internet network. The system was evaluated in Banjar, Jawa Barat, Indonesia. The system was able to control the SQM and transmit data to the data storage. The sky brightness level in Banjar is 20.1 mag/arcsec2. It is considered as a low light pollution area. The IoT based system is capable performing the Night Sky Brightness measurement in Banjar and as an important aspect to analyze the light pollution in a particular area.