Passed 10,000 submitted observations!

The Loss of the Night app project passed an arbitrary (yet still exciting) milestone at the end of January: The 10,000th observation submitted to the GLOBE at Night server.  The number includes submissions with the test version of the app: we will probably cross 10,000 submissions by people running release 1.0.0 or higher tonight.

I promised to send a holographic postcard to the citizen scientist who submitted the complete observation closest to #10,000, but unfortunately the user is in Japan, and I think my (English) email informing the person that he or she has won a prize and asking for his or her mailing address may have been flagged as spam...  I am still trying to contact the contributor, but for now, let's celebrate observation #10,005, which was the second closest to #10,000.

Data from observation #10005

The observation was made inside of Luxembourg City, and was especially useful because 15 stars were observed instead of the minimum 7. Stars which were seen are marked in black, stars which were invisible are empty red circles, and stars that the user wasn't sure about are blue. The best fit for the naked eye limiting magnitude was 2.55 (solid line), with an estimated range of +/-0.6 over which the observer was likely to have trouble deciding whether the stars were visible or not.

In the next version of the app, we intend to provide instant feedback to you about what the naked eye limiting magnitude is at your site, and how consistent your results were. We will also do a much better job of sampling both sides of the estimated NELM, and we will get rid of most of the pesky stars that are hard to identify (did you hear that Draco?).

Locations where the app has been used.

Above is the most recent plot of all of the places on Earth that people have used the app (up to February 5). The black dots mark the 1208 places where the observations can be used for our analysis (no clouds, no twilight, no moonlight, and at least 7 stars observed), and the red dots show locations where this criteria wasn't met. It's fantastic that so many of you from around the world are contributing to the project, and I hope that we'll continue to increase add new citizen scientists as the year rolls on! Thank you for participation!

Flashmob cancelled

Due to the poor weather forecast for tonight, we won't be holding a Flashmob for Science. The next event will take place in the USA, and I'll post information here when it's available. I hope that we will be able to hold a large event in Berlin this fall.

The 2nd GLOBE at Night period of 2014 has started, so if it's clear where you are tonight, then please go out and let us know how many stars you can see!

I am working on a grant application to improve the app, and because of that I will have very little time for posting in the next month. We have passed 10,000 submitted reports, and I hope that I will find some time to write about the two observations closest to #10,000 in the next weeks.

Great parking lot and terrible stair lighting

On a recent evening in Dresden, I noticed some great area lighting in a mall parking lot. As you can see below, the visibility in the parking lot is excellent.

In this closeup focused on the luminaires you can see that these types of lamps send almost no light directly up into the sky and are not at all glaring. Why isn't every parking lot in the world lit like this? Beats me...

Parking lot lighting (closeup) by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Of course, it's impossible to tell by eye how bright it is. It's possible that these lamps are putting out more light than is necessary. It's also possible that they should have a warmer color. Regardless of whether these lamps were perfect or not, it's clear that they are excellent compared to the typical parking lot!

While I was visiting Dresden, I also noticed another example of how additional light can make your vision worse:

Dangerous lighting 1 by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This lamp is intended to help people see, but it's right next to a stairway that is completely unlit due to bad positioning of the lamp! You can see how invisible the stairway is in these two photos from roughly the same angle:

Dangerous lighting 2 by Christopher Kyba is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

In this case, you would actually be better of if the lamp wasn't there, and you were just navigating by artificial skyglow or moonlight.

Finally, a little contest. Comparing the last two photos, can you spot another lighting problem? Answer in the comments.

Nearing observation #10,000

Thanks to a big increase in the number of app users after releasing our expanded language version, we will reach observation number 10,000* in the next few days. To celebrate the milestone, I will send a holographic postcard showing Europe by day and night to the registered user who makes a complete observation (7 or more stars, no moon, no twilight, no clouds) with the observation number closest to 10,000.

This postcard could be yours!

The moon is away, GLOBE at Night 2014 has officially started, so get out and observe some stars tonight!


*This doesn't mean that we have 10,000 good data points, because most of these observations have in fact been submitted by people running the demo mode, using the app when it's partly cloudy, when the sun is not fully set, when the moon is up, or not making decisions on at least 7 stars. Depending on the month, about 10-20% of all observations fit the strictest requirements for analyzing the data.

Update: Dr. Marsden made it to her interview

In an earlier post, I told the story of an American educated colleague of mine who was twice denied entry into the USA, who was worried she wouldn't be able to attend a job interview. Here is an update to her story:

Preface: I had already done a Skype interview with the professor I'm interviewing to work with. The next stage in the academic interview cycle is to go and give a seminar to the department on my work, and interact with the people I would be working with, mentoring, and to see the facilities I would have access to.  The interview is a two-way street, and people often interview at several places in order to receive multiple job offers, which can be leveraged into the best job and terms possible.  As it happens, I have been interviewing in multiple countries, and may wind up with multiple job offers, although not all are equal of course.  I am being pursued by U.S. institutions to work for them, in part because I was trained for 8 years in what I do, paid for by science foundations funded by the US government.

 

On the day before the interview, I showed up at the airport, letter of invitation and plane tickets bought by the university in hand.  In customs, they spent 3 hours questioning me and going through everything I had, in excruciating detail.  Looking through my texts, photos, every single piece of paper, etc.  It was embarrassing, although at least everything corroborated what I was saying.  

However, the officer kept saying things such as "you're under oath", "anything you say can be used against you", and "being permitted to enter the US is a privilege, not a right". While I have no problem with these statements in general, it served to make me feel as though I was a criminal, despite having never done anything wrong.  Disturbingly, he even said, "I know your type, you grew up in _____ with lawyers for parents and don't take this seriously".  

Despite denying that this had anything to do with unsubstantiated suspicions of a secret boyfriend, I was questioned vigorously about my relationship with one particular ex boyfriend.  In my 8 years in the States, I naturally dated people. In my case I'd dated about a handful of people relatively seriously.  The ex the border agent was particularly interested in was the one I had been attempting to visit over the holidays (and his family, with whom I am friends).  The officer thought it was strange that we are still friends and spend time together.  He thought he had trapped me in a lie when I said we broke up in 2012 but then found pictures of us hanging out in 2013.  Luckily for me, since I was telling the truth there was also evidence that we have both been dating other people.

In the end, I was cleared to stay for the few days around my interview (ie. I wasn't allowed to stay the length of a usual visitor visa) having to return on my return ticket, which I had planned to do anyways.  At this point though, I'd missed my first flight. After several phone calls, the university arranging my interview had to re-book, at the expense of several hundreds of dollars.   

 I was told that the next time I attempt to visit the US it will be the same.  I am not allowed to visit the US unless I have a job in Canada.  I was told that unless you're a student, being employed is a legal requirement for entry.  Even if I am invited for an interview, they may not let me through.    

 

It feels strange to know that the whole country next to mine, the ONLY country next to mine, is off limits.  I am not allowed to take time off and travel or take care of ailing loved ones, and am also not able to visit friends and family in the US, or be a tourist.  Even if I have enough savings to support myself, it is not allowed.  My statements were treated as lies without any attempt at verification.  I was treated as though being born in another country was my own bad decision, that I deserve to be punished for.  Yet I have done absolutely nothing wrong.

I'm glad Dr. Marsden was able to attend the interview, and I hope that her "luck" in being allowed to enter will continue with her other upcoming interviews in the US. If you are American and you think that baring Canadian astrophysicists from spending time and money in the US is not in the best strategic interests of your country, please pass this story on to your congressman.

GLOBE at Night's 2014 campaign starts tonight!

The 2014 GLOBE at Night campaign officially starts tonight, and the organizers need you to take part! In the GLOBE at Night project, people go out at night to spend a few minutes looking at the stars, and then report how many stars are visible. This generates Citizen Science data, which is really important for tracking how the brightness of the night sky is changing over time.

The world is undergoing a revolution in outdoor lighting due to the adoption of LEDs. No one is sure whether this will make the sky brighter or darker, and the best Earth Observing nighttime satellite isn't sensitive to much of the light produced by LEDs. So the ONLY way that we can really measure how the sky is changing is by having citizen scientists tell us what they see.

So please, take a moment on a clear night sometime this year to go outside, visit the stars, and let us know how many you can see.

In 2014, there are three ways to take part in GLOBE at Night:

1) The traditional web app (available in 20 languages!)
2) Using our Loss of the Night app (available in 11 languages - Android)
3) Using the Dark Sky Meter app (iOS)
 
Your data is valuable regardless of where you live, but we have a particularly strong need for people from brightly lit cities to take part. Multiple observations on different days (or observations using two or more methods) are especially valuable, because they improve the accuracy of the measurement.

We know that the night sky is changing. But we won't know how it's changing without your help.

A challenge for astrophotographers and landscape photographers

Calling all astrophotographers and landscape photographers - I've got a challenge for you! We've all seen full color photos of a landscape lit by the moon with stars in the sky:

But what about a pristine landscape lit only by the moon under completely overcast skies? That condition existed on about 15% of all nights back when life evolved, but I suspect that it's probably the most infrequently photographed landscape that exists on Earth. I could really use such a photo for a paper I'm working on at the moment, so if you know of one, please pass it on to me. If you've never seen such a photo, it's a challenge! Perhaps you'll be the first person ever to take such a photo?

It is essential that the region be nearly completely free of artificial lights, otherwise the scene will just be lit by the artificial skyglow (light pollution), rather than the diffuse moonlight shining through the clouds. You'll probably want the moon to be at least about 20 degrees above the horizon in order to have enough light to take the photo. The photo should show both the sky and the landscape.

Whoever is the first to submit a photo that matches the description will have the honor of the photo being displayed on this blog, and a holographic postcard of Europe by day and by night!