Artificial lights raise night sky luminance creating the most visible effect of light pollutionartificial skyglow. Despite the increasing interest among scientists in fields such as ecology astronomy health care and landuse planning light pollution lacks a current quantification of its magnitude on a global scale. To overcome this we present the world atlas of artificial sky luminance computed with our light pollution propagation software using new highresolution satellite data and new precision sky brightness measurements. This atlas shows that more than 80 of the world and more than 99 of the U.S. and European populations live under lightpolluted skies. The Milky Way is hidden from more than onethird of humanity including 60 of Europeans and nearly 80 of North Americans. Moreover 23 of the worlds land surfaces between 75N and 60S 88 of Europe and almost half of the United States experience lightpolluted nights.
['Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics', 'Physics - Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics']
The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness
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