A satellite map of Dark Sites

[Sreepathi Pai]

I stumbled on this
<http://nehruplanetarium.org/taarewiki/pmwiki.php?n=St.AgraStarCounts>
recently, which led me to this:

<http://www.lightpollution.it/dmsp/index.html>

Over there researchers have created maps of night sky brightness over
many parts of the world.

I downloaded the map for India and have hosted it here:

<http://hpc.serc.iisc.ernet.in/~sree/darksites/>

Caveat: It's not perfectly aligned, since there is no georeferencing
information in the original image, but it's mostly okay near
Bangalore. If someone can give me the lat/lon for the upper corner and
lower corner, I can regenerate that map. Also, only zoom levels upto
11.

Also, it's based on 96--97 data. Blue indicates double natural sky
brightness or a brightness increase of 10%, which is apparently the
definition of light pollution. There are other caveats mentioned on
the web page and in the paper, but generally we need to look for areas
with dark gray.

Hesaraghatta is "yellow", BTW.

Challakere is a small dot of yellow and green.

--
Sreepathi Pai

[Windy +]

Ah, let's go to Bihar.

[Nirmal]

Kanakapura is blue, so is Magadi.

Maybe we could try Savandurga after all, though from the map it is green.

23rd March is a new moon night.

Hopefully the clouds shall stay away.

Shall we try going to Savandurga on 23rd night?

People who have been to Savandurga at night before, pls advice.

And ppl who are interested, indicate so by replying.

Meanwhile we can make a wishlist of what all to see(say a mini Messier catalog) assuming we take only binocs along.

Starting here. Other pls contribute.

1) Pleiades

2) Hyades

3) Orion nebula

4) Beehive cluster // All four are visible early night b4 1am near Orion, last one near Gemini

5) M7

6) NGC 6231 ; both are apparently brilliant clusters in Scorpius between 2am and sunrise

 

7) Carina nebula 

8) Southern Pleiades // Both low on the southern skies between 7pm and 1am

9) Omega centauri // The brightest globular cluster in Centaurus

Regards,

nirmal

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Sreepathi Pai <sre...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Sreepathi Pai]

<http://www.bikeszone.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2643>

--
Sreepathi Pai

[Nirmal]

came across the paper which carried out this work. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001MNRAS.328..689C

thanks to sree for still hosting the map :)

then went on to look for citations to this work, and found a few interesting articles.

this one in nature in the U.N designated year of astronomy (2009) - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7225/full/457027a.html 

(could someone from iisc please post the pdf, cant access it at my place)

and this one in physics today in the same year giving a more detailed account of the sam - http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/62/12/10.1063/1.3273014

and in case we spot a comet, this one on how to measure the night sky light pollution in our area using it - http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013MNRAS.435..303S

nirmal

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Sreepathi Pai <sre...@gmail.com> wrote: