Sky Quality Meter “LU”

Description

A USB SQM model for night-time sky brightness monitoring!

An affordable meter for continual, connected measuring of sky brightness for astronomers!

The “Sky Quality Meter – LU” measures the brightness of the night sky in magnitudes per square arcsecond.

Uses:

• Find out how good the night or site REALLY is.
• Compare the sky brightness at different sites quantitatively.
• Document the evolution of light pollution in your area.
• Set planetarium dome illumination to mimic the skies people are likely to experience elsewhere in the city.
• Monitor sky brightness through the night, night-to-night, and year-to-year.
• Determine which nights show the greatest promise for finding the ‘faintest fuzzies’!
• Calibrate the effect of sky brightness on qualitative measures such as the Bortle Scale.
• Investigate how sky brightness correlates with the solar cycle and month-to-month sunspot activity.
• Help provide local ground truth for future sky brightness prediction with the www.cleardarksky.com
• CCD users can make a correlation between the SQM reading and when the background reaches some ADC level.

Features:

• Sky brightness reported in visual magnitudes per square arcsecond.
• Infrared blocking filter restricts measurement to visual bandpass.
• Sensor temperature, model number, and serial number are provided.
• Precision readings at even the darkest sites.
• Field-upgradeable firmware.
• Open protocol  http://unihedron.com/projects/darksky/cd/SQM-LU/SQM-LU_Users_manual.pdf

Specifications:

• USB connectivity
• Included applications for reading data in Perl.
• The Half Width Half Maximum (HWHM) of the angular sensitivity is ~10°. The Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) is then ~20°. The sensitivity to a point source ~19° off-axis is a factor of 10 lower than on-axis. A point source ~20° and ~40° off-axis would register 3.0 and 5.0 magnitudes fainter, respectively.
• Size 3.6 x 2.6 x 1.1 in.
• Maximum light sampling time: 80 seconds.
• Minimum light sampling time: 1 seconds.
• Specifications are subject to change without notice.

What you get:

SQM-LU unit SQM-LU users manual CD with PDF manual and example software 15ft USB cable Calibration sheet indicates unit USB serial number, and calibration value

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