Bortle scale: A way to assess and monitor the urban nightsky
Paper Details
Bortle scale: A way to assess and monitor the urban nightsky
Abstract
The skylines of the cities in Metro manila are towering buildings. Each city in it is peppered with high-rise buildings for business, commercial and residential purposes. The nighttime in these cities is as busy as daytime, the nighttime in these cities became as bright as daytime. A large percentage of the observers hail within Metro Manila. These respondents have scaled their night sky as BS7 which is characterized as City/Suburban Transition where light pollution makes the entire skylight gray, strong light sources are evident in all directions and the Milky Way is nearly or totally invisible. There’s also a big percentage of respondents coming from the outskirts of Metro Manila, these respondents have scaled their night sky as BS6 which is characterized as Bright Suburban Sky wherein the zodiacal light is invisible, clouds anywhere in the sky are fairly bright, and high clouds (cirrus) are brighter than the sky background. Also, there was a fairly large percentage of the respondents from provinces like Bulacan and Pampanga 2.5 to 3.5 hours away from Metro manila who scaled their night sky as BS which is characterized as Suburban Sky that can be described with light pollution that is visible in most directions, clouds are brighter than the sky, the light coming from the Milky Way is very weak near the horizon. Provinces that are 4 to 7 hours or more away from Metro Manila were scaled significantly lower or with darker night skies than provinces near Metro Manila.
Bashiri F, Che Hassan CR. 2014. Light Pollution and Its Effect on the Environment. International Journal of Fundamental Physical Sciences V4, 8-12. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/ 10.14331/ ijfps.2013.330061
Bennie J, Davies TW, Cruse D, Gaston KJ. 2016. Ecological effects of artificial light at night on wild plants. Journal of Ecology 104(3), 611-620. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12551
Chalkias C, Petrakis M, Psiloglou B, Lianou M. 2006. Modelling of light pollution in suburban areas using remotely sensed imagery and GIS. Journal of Environmental Management 79(1), 57-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2005.05.015
Chepesiuk R. 2009. Missing the Dark: Health Effects, H., & Pollution, L. (2009). Health Effects of Light Pollution 117(1), 20-27. doi:10.1289/ehp.117-
CPRE. 2016. Night Blight: Mapping England’s light pollution and dark skies. 1-20. https://www.nightblight.cpre.org.uk/images/resources/Night_Blight_cpre.pdf
Du J, Zhang X, King D. 2018. An investigation into the risk of night light pollution in a glazed office building: The effect of shading solutions. Building and Environment 145, 243-259. DOI: https://doi.org /10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.09.029
Falchi F, Cinzano P, Elvidge CD, Keith DM, Haim A. 2011. Limiting the impact of light pollution on human health, environment and stellar visibility. Journal of Environmental Management 92(10), 2714-2722. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.jenvman.2011.
Hollan J. 2009. What is light pollution , and how do we quantify it? Workshop Paper at Darksky 2007 Conference, December 2006, 1-12.
International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). How to conduct a sky quality survey. International Dark-Sky Association. Retrieved by (June 2021) https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation /idsp/become-a-dark-sky-place/sky-quality-survey/
Jiang W, He G, Long T, Wang C, Ni Y, Ma R. 2017. Assessing light pollution in China based on nighttime light imagery. Remote Sensing 9(2), 1-18.
Lau SY, Tsang HT, Vong YC. 2014. Light pollution in Hongkong (Outstanding Academic Papers of Students (OAPS)). Retrieved from City University of Hongkong, CityU Institutional Repository
Lim HS, Ngarambe J, Kim JT, Kim G. 2018. The reality of light pollution: A field survey for the determination of lighting environmental management zones in South Korea. Sustainability (Switzerland) 10(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/su10020374
Frank Fitzgerald Batin, Rose Ann Bautista, Ruby-Ann Dela Cruz, Jason Kalaw, Frank Kelvin Martinez, Princess Tucio, 2021. Bortle scale: A way to assess and monitor the urban nightsky. J. Biodiv. Environ. Sci., 19(5), 88-95.
Copyright © 2021 by the Authors. This article is an open access article and distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.