Protecting and restoring the sky quality at astronomical observatories

2026/05/18 by Salvador Bará, Fabio Falchi, Raul Lima +1 · 1 voice
Engineering · Environmental Science · Medicine · #Impact of Light on Environment and Health #Ocular and Laser Science Research #Optical Wireless Communication Technologies

paper · doi:10.5281/zenodo.20259634

openalex publication_date 2026/05/18 · openalex created_date 2026/05/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01

Abstract

This paper addresses the need of preserving the quality of the night sky, ensuring that the artificial sky brightness is kept below the maximum admissible limits, now and in the foreseeable future. Because skyglow is a cumulative immission problem, effective observatory protection requires enforceable emission budgets rather than relying solely on source by source control. The present approach is based on setting clear red-lines for the maximum admissible anthropogenic radiance at astronomical observatories, and enforcing the corresponding limit on the total artificial light emissions in their surrounding territories. Keywords: Light pollution; Site protection; Restoration; Astronomical observatories; Radiometry; Photometry

Discussions

• A brief preprint with definite proposals to protect and restore the quality of the night sky at astronomical observatories (or how to survive light pollution from terrestrial light sources) doi.org/ [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

Related

• The growing threat of light pollution to ground-based observatories
• The Effects of Improper Lighting on Professional Astronomical Observations
• Trust, but verify: Reducing artificial light emissions and monitoring compliance
• Keeping light pollution at bay: A red-lines, target values, top-down approach
• The measurement of the sky brightness at Merate Observatory