Sky Quality Meter - Lens USB

Sky Quality Meter - Lens USB

Purchase from the manufacturer's website or worldwide dealers.

Build

Borrow

Buy

You can buy this tool from Unihedron. The anticipated price range is $101 - $250.

About this tool
Description	Uses: (http://www.unihedron.com/projects/sqm-lu/) •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 Clear Sky Clock. •CCD users can make a correlation between the SQM reading and when the background reaches some ADC level. Info. copied from: http://www.unihedron.com/projects/sqm-lu/ 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 document. 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. This tool is recommended for lending libraries.
Used by these projects	Loss of the Night, Globe at Night, Dark Sky Meter
Ideal Age Group	Elementary school (6 - 10 years), Middle school (11 - 13 years), High school (14 - 17 years), College, Graduate students, Adults, Families, Seniors (The SQM-LU requires connection to a computer for readings to be viewed. Unihedron also carries handheld units with direct readout.)
Training	Learning materials are available online.
Size & weight	Small: This tool would fit in a 6 inch cube. Between 13oz and 1lb (4 sticks of butter weigh about 1lb)
Expected lifetime	Should last more or less forever
Topics	Nature & Outdoors, Astronomy & Space
Activities	At night
Tool updated	Jan. 5, 2017, 11:51 a.m.