Light Pollution

In the animation I used 5 real values for different observing sites, then figured a good value in mag/arcsec2 for Manhattan, NY. Below you will find the five different sites, links to their homepage, as well as a small bio.

Kitt Peak National Observatory: Located 56 miles southwest of Tucson, AZ, at an altitude of 6,875 feet.

Mt. Wilson Observatory: Located in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California, at an altitude of 5,715 feet.

Van Vleck Observatory: An observatory located on Wesleyan University's campus in Middletown, CT.

David Dunlap Observatory: Located just north of Toronto at an altitude of 735 feet.

Batavia: Located in Batavia, Illinois, which is outside of outside Chicago.

Manhattan: Based off of what we know of each of these sites, we speculated the Mag/Arcsec2 of Manhattan, NY to be around 17 Mag/Arcsec2.

Image taken from Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC. Based on data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

By Shannon Smith and Andy Layden -- Physics & Astronomy Dept at BGSU -- Copyright 2008.