How Clear was your Sky? -- Your Observations

You will surely remember the Astronomy On-Line Collaborative Project on Light Pollution. It was announced some days ago in a Newspaper article.

Despite the rather bad weater during the recent days and nights, quite a few Astronomy On-Line groups were able to make measurements according to the method described in the text. The idea was to judge the magnitude of the faintest star which you could just see with the unaided eye. The fainter the magnitude, the smaller would be the light pollution in your area.

The evaluation of the incoming responses is rather time consuming - it involves the detailed comments and of course the degree of moonlight.

This evaluation will be done during the coming days by Andreas Haenel (Email: ahaenel@rz.uni-osnabrueck.de and URL: http://www.physik.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE/students/ahaenel). In the meantime, one of the ESO-astronomers, Christian Drouet-d'Aubigny, has kindly put together the table shown below. It gives the main data of those observations which were received until early this morning.

As you can immediately see, there are important differences between individual sites. For instance, Munich (where ESO Headquarters are located) is rather bad (3.7) while Volos and Giarre (2.1) seem even worse, at least in those places where the respective measurements were made. Contrarily, the Chilean group in Concepcion (who cannot see the constellation Ursa Minor because it is too far north from their site and therefore under the horizon - but they used stars in the Orion constellation), found 5.6, and even 6.3 was registered near Sofia.

We thank all participants who have submitted their measurements so far, but you are most welcome to send in observations, also after the termination of the Hot Week of Astronomy On-Line. Rest assured that you observations will be important for this project and that you will soon see a much more detailed report about the outcome.

International Steering Committee
Astronomy On-Line