Related papers: A revised simplified scattering model for the moon…
Sky conditions in the remote, dry north-western interior of South Africa are now the subject of considerable interest in view of the imminent construction of numerous solar power plants in this area. Furthermore, the part of this region in…
We report measurements from which we determine the spatial structure of the lunar contribution to night sky brightness, taken at the LSST site on Cerro Pachon in Chile. We use an array of six photodiodes with filters that approximate the…
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…
We investigate the polarization patterns from the moonlit sky as observed from the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal. The moonlit sky background can be significant in astronomical observations and thus be a source of…
The Steward Observatory LEO Satellite Photometric Survey is a comprehensive observational survey to characterize the apparent brightness of the Starlink and OneWeb low Earth orbit satellites and evaluate the potential impact on astronomy.…
With a sky brightness monitor in Xinglong station of National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), we collected data from 22 dark clear nights and 90 lunar nights. We first measured the sky brightness variation with time in dark…
We present revised point-spread functions (PSFs) for the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). These PSFs provide a robust estimate of the light diffracted by the meshes holding the entrance and…
In this paper, a total of about 28000 images in $V$ and $R$ band obtained on 161 nights using the one-meter optical telescope at Weihai Observatory (WHO) of Shandong University since 2008 to 2012 have been processed to measure the sky…
The apparent brightness of satellites is calculated as a function of satellite position as seen by a ground-based observer in darkness. Both direct illumination of the satellite by the Sun as well as indirect illumination due to reflection…
The Earth's atmosphere affects ground-based astronomical observations. Scattering, absorption, and radiation processes deteriorate the signal-to-noise ratio of the data received. For scheduling astronomical observations it is, therefore,…
Estimating the sky background is critical for ground-based astronomical research. In the optical, scattered moonlight dominates the sky background, when the moon is above the horizon. The most uncertain component of a scattered moonlight…
In this paper we show that Sun-viewing images obtained by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Navigation Cameras (Navcam) can be used for retrieving the dust optical depth and constrain the aerosol physical properties at Gale Crater by…
The Sky Quality Meter (SQM) has become the most common device to track the evolution of the brightness of the sky from polluted regions to first class astronomical observatories. A vast database of SQM measurements already exists for many…
The largest natural source of light at night is the Moon, and it is the major contributor to the astronomical sky background. Being able to accurately predict the sky background, including scattered moonlight is important for scheduling…
The low surface brightness (LSB) regime ($\mu_{g} \gtrsim 26$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$) comprises a vast, mostly unexplored discovery space, from dwarf galaxies to the diffuse interstellar medium. Accessing this regime requires precisely removing…
Modeling the brightness of satellites in large Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations can not only assist the astronomical community in assessing the impact of reflected light from satellites, optimizing observing schedules and guiding data…
The Sky Brightness Monitor (SBM) is an important instrument to measure the brightness level for the sky condition, which is a critical parameter for judging a site for solar coronal observations. In this paper we present an automatic method…
In observations of diffuse emissions like, e.g., the Lyman-$\alpha$ heliospheric glow, contributions to the observed signal from point sources (e.g., stars) are considered as a contamination. There are relatively few brightest point sources…
The visual perception of the natural night sky in many places of the world is strongly disturbed by anthropogenic light. Part of this artificial light is scattered in the atmosphere and propagates towards the observer, adding to the natural…
SAOZ (Systeme d'Analyse par Observation Zenitale) is a balloon born experiment which determines the column density of several molecular species from the visible spectrum of sunlight. We will use sequence of spectra collected during a sunset…