Hunting for nightHave you ever known something spectacular is happening in the night sky, wanted to
Hunting for nightHave you ever known something spectacular is happening in the night sky, wanted to see it, and stepped outside only to find that you couldn’t find it because you were in a city? This property even has a name: light pollution.Some areas are known for their dark skies; the International Dark Sky Association maintains a list of prime viewing areas (http://tmblr.co/Zyv2Js1Dk2Gnt), but what if you wanted to see the sky and just couldn’t drive to a national park that day?Our friends at NOAA have decided to help with that problem. The Suomi-NPP satellite orbiting Earth right now has an instrument on it designed to detect light emitted at night and it has spent years producing startling images of the lights of the planet at Night.Using that instrument, NOAA compiled this map of light pollution worldwide. It’s overlaid on Bing Maps and is zoomable, so if you’re like me and in a city and just want to find somewhere nearby with better sky viewing for something special, this map might be a great friend.Oh, and the light surges at the northern edge of Canada? Suomi-NPP occasionally captures light from the auroras as well.-JBBImage credit: NOAA/NASA/Earthstarhttp://www.lightpollutionmap.info/More on light pollution:http://darksky.org/ -- source link
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#night sky#dark sky#light pollution#suomi npp#satellite#light