30 percent of people in the world cannot see the Milky Way constellation on a clear night.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — The glow of the night sky over an inhabited area or known as skyglow makes it hard for many people to see bintang in the night sky. The glow comes from light excess material that is emitted or reflected upwards, then scattered by aerosols and water droplets or small particles such as pollutants in the atmosphere.
A new study published in the journal Science reveals, skyglow What the human eye catches is more of a problem than satellite measurements of artificial light on Earth. The findings are the latest addition to a growing body of scientific literature on light pollution dating back at least half a century.
Researchers use data crowdsourced from the Globe at Night program, run by NOIRLab and funded by the National Science Foundation’s network of observatories. The research team analyzed more than 50,000 observations citizen scientist.
It found a 9.6 percent increase in sky brightness over the past decade, compared to just 2 percent per year as measured by satellite. The authors estimate that 80 percent of people in the United States and 30 percent of people worldwide cannot see the constellations. Milky Way on a clear night.
“At this rate of change, a child born in a location where 250 stars are visible could only see about 100 by the time they are 18 years old,” said the study’s lead author, Christopher Kyba, who is a researcher at the German Research Center for Geosciences.
Part of the problem hard to see stars to the naked eye with regards to the type of lighting used. According to Kyba, LED lights have a strong effect on the perception of sky brightness. That could be one of the reasons behind the discrepancy between the satellite and the measurements sky conditions reported by participants of “Globe at Night”.
Satellites also have difficulty detecting light emitted horizontally from more prominent urban sources such as billboards or storefronts. The rate at which stars become invisible to people in urban environments is dramatic. Enhancement skyglow most common in North America, followed by Europe.
As well as the obvious impact on astronomy and sky observation, another study author, Constance Walker, who heads “Globe at Night,” highlights other consequences. Skyglow he said it affects the activities of diurnal and nocturnal animals. Diurnal animals are animals that are active during the day and sleep at night. Meanwhile, nocturnal or nocturnal animals are animals that sleep during the day and are active at night.
“Enhancement skyglow over the past decade underscored the importance of redoubled efforts and developing new strategies to protect dark skies,” said Walker. CNETMonday (23/1/2023).
