Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute

Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologia dell'Inquinamento Luminoso

Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute

The night sky in the World Home Page
How we surveil the situation of the night sky with satellites
The DMSP satellite and its Operational Linescan System
The World Atlas of sea level artificial night sky brightness
Maps of the artificial night sky brightness
Maps of the total night sky brightness
Maps of the naked eye stellar visibility
Maps of the number of visible stars
Maps of the growth of light pollution
Maps of the night sky in selected sites
Our scientific papers
Our group of study
Light Pollution in Italy Web Site
Dep. of Astronomy University of Padova

National Geophysical Data Center - DMSP Nighttime Lights of the World

International Dark-Sky Association - DMSP nighttime  images

NASA - DMSP pages

Earth View

The night sky live

 

Copyright 2000, P. Cinzano, Thiene, Italy

 All rights reserved

 

The night sky in the World

Satellite monitoring of the artificial night sky brightness and the stellar visibility

 

The World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness

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Click on the map to make larger

See the section Maps of the artificial night sky brightness for an explanation on what exactly these maps show. See also the Frequently Asked Questions.

For a description of the Atlas and the technique, further details and a statistical analysis, please download the original paper in PDF: Cinzano, P., Falchi, F., Elvidge C.D.  2001, The first world atlas of the artificial night sky brightness, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society. 

Colours correspond to ratios between the artificial sky brightness and the natural sky brightness of: <0.01 (black), 0.01-0.11 (dark-gray), 0.11-0.33 (blue), 0.33-1 (green), 1-3 (yellow), 3-9 (orange), 9-27 (red), <27 (white). 

The figures of this Atlas are copyright of  the Royal Astronomical Society.

Reproduction Guidelines for use of the images of this Atlas.

 

Download a zipped TIFF with a medium-resolution composite map of the entire World  (1.7MB zipped; 201MB unzipped). The composite high-resolution maps of individual continents can be downloaded from the relative pages. Be careful because their size is huge.

Open a thumbnail bar in a left frame to browse the Atlas.

The World

 

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Europe

 

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Center Asia

 

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North America

 

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Africa

 

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East Asia

 

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South America

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West Asia

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Oceania

 

The night sky in the World  Home page