Night sky brightness at sites from DMSP-OLS satellite measurements

Abstract

We apply the sky brightness modelling technique introduced and developed by Roy Garstang to high-resolution DMSP-OLS satellite measurements of upward artificial light flux and to GTOPO30 digital elevation data in order to predict the brightness distribution of the night sky at a given site in the primary astronomical photometric bands for a range of atmospheric aerosol contents. This method, based on global data and accounting for elevation, Earth curvature and mountain screening, allows the evaluation of sky glow conditions over the entire sky for any site in the World, to evaluate its evolution, to disentangle the contribution of individual sources in the surrounding territory, and to identify main contributing sources. Sky brightness, naked eye stellar visibility and telescope limiting magnitude are produced as 3-dimensional arrays whose axes are the position on the sky and the atmospheric clarity. We compared our results to available measurements.