Comparing the Accuracy of Different Sky Luminance Meters for Light Pollution Detection

Tiffany Ndauwa

ABSTRACT

Light pollution is the excessive use of artificial light at night, also known as ALAN. Effects ranging from altering wildlife patterns, increasing adverse human health effects such as cancer and disturbed sleep patterns, as well as costing nations billions of dollars, light pollution is an ecological and economic hurdle, and many have come up with ways to quantify its amounts and see how it is affecting different parts of the world. Several devices and softwares have been developed to contribute to citizen science that helps visualize how light pollution has spread. The Sky Quality Meter (SQM) and Dark Sky Meter app on iPhone were used in this experiment to identify whether these devices are reliable when conducting light pollution data, with an emphasis on the app to test if it is a source that can be both consumer friendly and accurate. The Dark Sky Meter app provided results that were not within the hypothesized 0.4 mag/arcsec2 value. In clear conditions, the measurements of the app compared to the SQM came the closest to the hypothesized value, with a range of between 0.56-0.905 mag/arcsec2 difference. The concerning differences in values came when the sky was extremely illuminated with either a visible moon or a complete overcast, with a much greater variation range between 0.695-4.05 mag/arcsec2 detected, depending on the specific weather conditions evaluated. This shows that the Dark Sky Meter app shows too great of an inaccurate variation compared to the SQM to be reliable for light pollution detection.

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