Title
Intercomparisons of nine sky brightness detectors.
Abstract
Nine Sky Quality Meters (SQMs) have been intercompared during a night time measurement campaign held in the Netherlands in April 2011. Since then the nine SQMs have been distributed across the Netherlands and form the Dutch network for monitoring night sky brightness. The goal of the intercomparison was to infer mutual calibration factors and obtain insight into the variability of the SQMs under different meteorological situations. An ensemble average is built from the individual measurements and used as a reference to infer the mutual calibration factors. Data required additional synchronization prior to the calibration determination, because the effect of moving clouds combined with small misalignments emerges as time jitter in the measurements. Initial scatter of the individual instruments lies between +/- 14%. Individual night time sums range from -16% to +20%. Intercalibration reduces this to 0.5%, and -7% to +9%, respectively. During the campaign the smallest luminance measured was 0.657 +/- 0.003 mcd/m(2) on 12 April, and the largest value was 5.94 +/- 0.03 mcd/m(2) on 2 April. During both occurrences interfering circumstances like snow cover or moonlight were absent.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.3390/s111009603
SENSORS
Keywords
Field
DocType
artificial lighting,intercomparison,intercalibration,light pollution,night sky brightness,Sky Quality Meter
Meteorology,Night sky,Light pollution,Sky brightness,Remote sensing,Sky,Sky Quality Meter,Engineering,Luminance,Calibration,Brightness
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
11
10
1424-8220
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.91
0
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Peter den Outer121.25
Dorien Lolkema221.25
Marty Haaima321.25
Rene van der Hoff421.25
Henk Spoelstra521.25
Wim Schmidt621.25