Sky Quality Meter Research Articles

The Application of Sky Quality Meter at Twilight for Islamic Prayer Time

Abstract —The aim of this study is to detect elusive light that indicate the prayer time (Isha’). Therefore, we focused on optical sky brightness at dusk from May 2007 through April 2008 intermittently. The measurements of twilight sky brightness were covered at one (1) site covering; West coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The measurements were done by applying Sky Quality Meter (SQM) which covered between 400-700 nm in accordance of human eyes and SQM range. Results showed that there are clear indications of light changes when Sun at certain degree below horizon that visible by plateau form in twilight sky brightness dependences versus solar zenith angle. It is clarified that the yearly averages of solar depression by observation are best correlated within the range of 17.3o – 19.5o for Isha’. Index Terms —Twilight; prayer time; sky quality meter. I. I NTRODUCTION Early studies done by astronomers such as Ibn Muadh, al-Biruni, al-Qayini, Ibn Yunus etc.[1], [2]. Ibn al-Shatir adopted various value for each prayer times such as 17

Intercomparisons of Nine Sky Brightness Detectors

Nine Sky Quality Meters (SQMs) have been intercompared during a night time measurement campaign held in the Netherlands in April 2011. Since then the nine SQMs have been distributed across the Netherlands and form the Dutch network for monitoring night sky brightness. The goal of the intercomparison was to infer mutual calibration factors and obtain insight into the variability of the SQMs under different meteorological situations. An ensemble average is built from the individual measurements and used as a reference to infer the mutual calibration factors. Data required additional synchronization prior to the calibration determination, because the effect of moving clouds combined with small misalignments emerges as time jitter in the measurements. Initial scatter of the individual instruments lies between ±14%. Individual night time sums range from −16% to +20%. Intercalibration reduces this to 0.5%, and −7% to +9%, respectively. During the campaign the smallest luminance measured was 0.657 ± 0.003 mcd/m2 on 12 April, and the largest value was 5.94 ± 0.03 mcd/m2 on 2 April. During both occurrences interfering circumstances like snow cover or moonlight were absent.

Night-sky brightness monitoring in Hong Kong

Results of the first comprehensive light pollution survey in Hong Kong are presented. The night-sky brightness was measured and monitored around the city using a portable light-sensing device called the Sky Quality Meter over a 15-month period beginning in March 2008. A total of 1,957 data sets were taken at 199 distinct locations, including urban and rural sites covering all 18 Administrative Districts of Hong Kong. The survey shows that the environmental light pollution problem in Hong Kong is severe-the urban night skies (sky brightness at 15.0 mag arcsec(- 2)) are on average ~ 100 times brighter than at the darkest rural sites (20.1 mag arcsec(- 2)), indicating that the high lighting densities in the densely populated residential and commercial areas lead to light pollution. In the worst polluted urban location studied, the night-sky at 13.2 mag arcsec(- 2) can be over 500 times brighter than the darkest sites in Hong Kong. The observed night-sky brightness is found to be affected by human factors such as land utilization and population density of the observation sites, together with meteorological and/or environmental factors. Moreover, earlier night skies (at 9:30 p.m. local time) are generally brighter than later time (at 11:30 p.m.), which can be attributed to some public and commercial lightings being turned off later at night. On the other hand, no concrete relationship between the observed sky brightness and air pollutant concentrations could be established with the limited survey sampling. Results from this survey will serve as an important database for the public to assess whether new rules and regulations are necessary to control the use of outdoor lightings in Hong Kong.

Measuring and modelling light pollution at the Zselic Starry Sky Park

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.

Stimulus discrimination by horses under scotopic conditions

Scotopic vision in horses (Equus caballus) was investigated using behavioral measurements for the first time. Four horses were tested for the ability to make simple visual discriminations of geometric figures (circles and triangles) under various brightness levels within an enclosed building. Measurements of brightness ranging from 10.37 to 24.12 magnitudes per square arcsecond (mag/arcsec(2); in candelas per square meter-7.70 to 2.43E-05cd/m(2)) were taken using a Sky Quality Meter. These values approximated outdoor conditions ranging from twilight in open country to a dark moonless night in dense forest. The horses were able to solve the discrimination problems in all brightness settings up to 23.77mag/arcsec(2) (3.35E-05cd/m(2)). Moreover, they easily navigated their way around obstacles located within the testing area in extremely dim light (>23.50mag/arcsec(2); 4.30E-05cd/m(2)), which were in conditions too dark for the human experimenters to see. These findings support physiological data that reveal a rod-dominated visual system as well as observations of equine activity at night.