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Bará, S., Falchi, F., Furgoni, R., & Lima, R. C. (2020). Fast Fourier-transform calculation of artificial night sky brightness maps. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, 240, 106658.
Abstract: Light pollution poses a growing threat to optical astronomy, in addition to its detrimental impacts on the natural environment, the intangible heritage of humankind related to the contemplation of the starry sky and, potentially, on human health. The computation of maps showing the spatial distribution of several light pollution related functions (e.g. the anthropogenic zenithal night sky brightness, or the average brightness of the celestial hemisphere) is a key tool for light pollution monitoring and control, providing the scientific rationale for the adoption of informed decisions on public lighting and astronomical site preservation. The calculation of such maps from satellite radiance data for wide regions of the planet with sub-kilometric spatial resolution often implies a huge amount of basic pixel operations, requiring in many cases extremely large computation times. In this paper we show that, using adequate geographical projections, a wide set of light pollution map calculations can be reframed in terms of two-dimensional convolutions that can be easily evaluated using conventional fast Fourier-transform (FFT) algorithms, with typical computation times smaller than 10^-6 s per output pixel.
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Bará, S., Ribas, S., & Kocifaj, M. (2015). Modal evaluation of the anthropogenic night sky brightness at arbitrary distances from a light source. J. of Optics, 17, 105607.
Abstract: The artificial emissions of light contribute to a high extent to the observed brightness of the night sky in many places of the world. Determining the all-sky radiance of anthropogenic origin requires solving the radiative transfer equation for ground-level light sources, generally resorting to a double-scattering approximation in order to account for the observed radiance patterns with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Since the all-sky radiance distribution produced by an elementary light source depends on the distance to the observer in a way that is not immediately obvious, the contributions of sources located at different distances have to be computed on an individual basis, solving for each one the corresponding scattering integrals. In this paper we show that these calculations may be significantly alleviated by using a modal approach, whereby the hemispheric night-sky radiance is expanded in terms of a convenient basis of two-dimensional (2D) orthogonal functions. Since the modal coefficients of this expansion do vary smoothly with the distance to the observer, the all-sky brightness distributions produced by light sources located at arbitrary intermediate distances can be efficiently estimated by interpolation, provided that the coefficients at a discrete set of distances are accurately determined beforehand.
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Bará, S., Tilve, V., Nievas, M., Sanchez de Miguel, A., & Zamorano, J. (2015). Zernike power spectra of clear and cloudy light-polluted urban night skies. Appl. Opt., 54(13), 4120–4129.
Abstract: The Zernike power spectra of the all-sky night brightness distributions of clear and cloudy nights are computed using a modal projection approach. The results obtained in the B, V and R Johnson-Cousins' photometric bands during a one-year campaign of observations at a light-polluted urban site show that these spectra can be described by simple power laws with exponents close to -3 for clear nights and -2 for cloudy ones. The second-moment matrices of the Zernike coefficients show relevant correlations between modes. The multiplicative role of the cloud cover, that contributes to a significant increase of the brightness of the urban night sky in comparison with the values obtained in clear nights, is described in the Zernike space.
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