Which indicators do you use to measure light pollution?

[ADRAL]

We are preparing the monitoring protocol for the five destinations and we keep finding the same problem: everybody measures something different, and the numbers are not comparable.

Two questions for the group:

• Which indicator do you actually report – sky brightness (mag/arcsec2), number of fixtures, or the hours of lighting?
• How often do you measure, and with which device?

In our case we have one Sky Quality Meter and one all-sky camera, and we measure twice a season. It is not enough, but I would like to know what the rest of you can realistically maintain before we propose something in the next WP1 meeting.

[Ana Perez]

We use sky brightness only, in mag/arcsec2, measured with a SQM-L twice a season. Fixtures are counted once a year, when we renew the certification. It is cheap and it survives changes of staff, which for us was the main risk.

[Antonio Lopez – Operador]

Same here, but with an all-sky camera. The problem is not the measurement, it is that two of our destinations have no trained person to take it. A one-page protocol with a photograph of the device in place helped more than any training session.

[Author]

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