Light Pollution Monitoring: Connecting Earth and Space

Dear Colleagues,

The past decade has seen a growth of interest in the topic of light at night as we become more aware of the increasing environmental light burden and the impact of light on human health and biodiversity, as well as the more obvious deleterious effect of excessive light in terms of energy waste. The launch of SUOMI NPP and subsequent spacecraft such as Luojia-1 has given the research community access to near-real-time quantifiable night-time measurements from space at a community scale of hundreds of metres, and these data have supplemented DSLR imagery from the International Space Station, which provides color information down to the tens of metres scale. Much progress has been made with the utilisation and integration of these data in the fields of local economics, industrial development and population growth, as well as for studying oil and gas production, and environmental light. The connection with human habitation and working has also enabled night light data to be used to monitor the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the correlation with air pollution.

In this Special Issue, we invite submissions on the impact of both space- and ground-based artificial light at night (ALAN) measurements and their implications for the wider environmental and scientific field. We particularly encourage papers which connect ground-based luminance, illuminance and photographic data with space-borne measurements to close the loop in the measurement process and thus produce an integrated picture of light at night. Survey papers and reviews are welcomed.

Prof. Dr. Brian Espey
Prof. Dr. Salvador Bará
Guest Editors

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• artificial light at night (ALAN)
• light pollution
• remote sensing
• all-sky imagery
• energy use
• environment