The night sky over Westhavelland, Germany

A few weeks ago I was in Sternenpark Westhavelland (International Dark-Sky Reserve Westhavelland) to try to measure the degree to which individual streetlights affect the night sky in a pristine area. The lamps are part of a biological and ecological field experiment of the Verlust der Nacht (Loss of the Night) project, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Together with a colleague, we walked different distances from the lamps and then remotely the lights them off and on. In addition to measurements with a continuous logger, I took a few all-sky images. This one is from the middle of the field when the lights were off:

Verlust der Nacht field at night by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

You can download the full resolution version here. The sky is blue because it is lit by lunar twilight. The glow at the right (East) is a combination of the moon and the city of Berlin. The glow at top left (southeast) is the nearby town of Rathenow.

The next photo shows the view a few hundred meters from the field when the lights are turned on (the field is the bright glow at right):

Verlust der Nacht field lit at night by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Finally, this animation shows how the whole environment near the field changes as the lights turn on:

Verlust der Nacht field turning on by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

I think the lighting up of the nearby tree and grass is the most dramatic - just think of what a complete difference this is for the insects and birds that live there! Here's a higher resolution version.

UPDATE Nov 23, 2015: We have published a paper describing the field site and a few of the first experimental results. You can read about it for free at the journal Sustainability.