Researchers from the German „Loss of the Night“ project have
developed an app for Android smart phones, which counts the number of visible
stars in the sky. The data from the app will be used by scientists to
understand light pollution on a world wide scale.
"In natural areas you can see several thousand stars
with the naked eye" says Dr. Christopher Kyba, physicist at the
Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and Freie
Universität. "In Berlin, we can still see several hundred, but the situation
in most large cities and world capitals is far worse." The smartphone app
will evaluate sky brightness, also known as skyglow, on a worldwide scale.