Charity uses ISS photos to track light pollution

Charity uses ISS photos to track light pollution

A leading charity, 'Cities at Night' has said that it has used thousands of night-time photos of major cities taken by the ISS in order to study light pollution in the previous year.

American space agency, NASA also asked people to millions of pictures to be used for the initiative.Cities at Night has confirmed that the diffuse glow around cities visible from space is street lighting. It said that the diffuse lighting is separate from lights coming from vehicles and buildings. However, scientists were not able to trace the exact origin using low resolution imagery from eh satellite.

All of the images used in the initiative have been "calibrated using the stars in the background sky over the ISS and measurements of the night sky lighting. The images were not just used to spot diffused lighting, but also to determine the level of light pollution. The study is the first to show light pollution across large regions across the world.

The study was conducted by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain and the Cégep de Sherbrooke in Canada. Cities at Night has published galleryof night-time pictures taken by astronauts and geo-referenced on a world map.


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