Globe at Night

Globe at Night
Artificial lights showing the locations of light pollution in October 2012.
Artificial lights showing the locations of light pollution in October 2012.
KeywordsLight Pollution, Astronomy, Scotobiology, Citizen Science, Crowdsourcing
Funding agencyNational Science Foundation via NOIRLab
ObjectiveMeasuring and raising awareness of artificial light pollution
Project coordinatorAURA, Connie Walker
PartnersInternational Dark-Sky Association, CADIAS
Duration2006 –
WebsiteOfficial website Edit this at Wikidata

Globe at Night is an international scientific research program that crowdsources measurements of light pollution in the night sky. At set time periods within each year, the project asks people to count the number of stars that they can see from their location and report it to the project's website. The coordinating researchers compile this information to produce a public, freely available map of global light pollution. By September 2011, almost 70,000 measurements had been made.[1] The use of data collected by the public makes the program an example of citizen science.[2] Globe at Night began as a NASA educational program in the US organized by the NOAO, and was expanded internationally during the 2009 International Year of Astronomy;[3] it is an offshoot of the GLOBE Program, which focuses on school-based science education.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference ng was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Kyba, Christopher C. M.; Wagner, Janna M.; Kuechly, Helga U.; Walker, Constance E.; Elvidge, Christopher D.; Falchi, Fabio; Ruhtz, Thomas; Fischer, Jürgen; Hölker, Franz (16 May 2013). "Citizen Science Provides Valuable Data for Monitoring Global Night Sky Luminance". Scientific Reports. 3: 1835. Bibcode:2013NatSR...3E1835K. doi:10.1038/srep01835. PMC 3655480. PMID 23677222.
  3. ^ Walker, Constance; Stephen Pompea (3 November 2010). "Global campaign to save energy and fight light pollution". SPIE Newsroom. doi:10.1117/2.1201009.003213.