The Loss of the Night app turns your eyes into a light meter, allowing you to become a citizen scientist and report how bright the night sky is where you live!
In many parts of the world, the night sky shines with wasted artificial light from poorly designed street lamps. Skyglow outshines the stars in the skies, and dramatically changes the natural nighttime environment. Scientists are concerned that light pollution might have a big impact on nocturnal ecosystems, but they have very little information about how bright the actually sky is worldwide, or how skyglow is changing over the years.
You can help monitor skyglow using this app! It's based on Google's Sky Map, and lets you make measurements with a very sensitive, stable, and well understood light meter: your eyes! All you need to do is look for certain stars in the sky, and tell us whether you can see them or not. Using the Loss of the Night app is both fun and educational, and it also generates important scientific information that might help to protect the environment in the future.