"Loss of the night" app measures light pollution
Monday, December 23, 2013 - 07:50
in Mathematics & Economics
If the Christmas story were set in the modern era, you might expect that the three wise men would need to rely on their GPS whenever they came into a town. But in fact, some stars can still be seen in even in the most brightly lit cities, and researchers of the German interdisciplinary project "Verlust der Nacht" are asking citizen scientists to count them. The scientists developed the "Loss of the Night app" to quantify the illumination of the night sky caused by artificial light. The app, originally available in only German and English, has now been expanded to support 11 languages in order to get data from as many regions as possible.