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Session 13 - Surveys, SETI and Pollution.
Display session, Monday, June 08
Atlas Ballroom,
Connecticut has some of the brightest night skies in the Northeast. Paradoxically, because of its topography it also has some of the darkest skies.
An initial survey of the levels of light pollution in the state was conducted in 1992-93 using portable, null-type photometers with LEDs as comparison light sources. Zenith sky brightnesses were observed for eighteen Connecticut cities and towns, chosen for their relative light-isolation from other urban centers and having populations between 2,500 and 142,000. The sky brightness ranged from 1800 to 12,000 S10 units and was correlated approximately to the square root of the population, similar to results of a 1974 RASC study in Ontario.
Because of the limited accuracy and nonlinearity of visual photometers and the small sample size of the 1992-93 work, a new sky brightness study was begun in the autumn of 1997. The work in progress uses a portable telescope and a photodiode photometer with Johnson B and V filters. The methodology of this research and some early results will be presented.
