Sky Quality Meter
The - L measures the brightness of the night sky in magnitudes per square arcsecond. Perfect for checking how dark you night sky is and for dark sky reserve projects.
Unprecedented sensitivity in a handheld meter. Uses:
- Find out how good the night or site REALLY is.
- Compare the sky brightness at different sites.
- Monitor sky brightness through the night, night-to-night, and year-to-year.
- Set planetarium dome illumination to mimic the skies people are likely to experience elsewhere in the city.
- Determine which nights show the greatest promise for finding the 'faintest fuzzies'.
- Calibrate the effect of sky brightness on qualitative measures such as the Bortle Scale.
- Investigate how sky brightness correlates with the solar cycle and month-to-month sunspot activity.
- Help provide local ground truth for future sky brightness prediction with the Clear Sky Clock.
- CCD users can make a correlation between the SQM reading and when the background reaches some ADC level.