Do you want to participate in the global star count organized by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and help scientists calculate the light pollution of the planet ? All you have to do is lean out of the window any night between October 20 and November 3, look for the constellation Swan (or Sagittarius if you live in the southern hemisphere), take a series of notes, and report back. your observations via the Great World Wide Star Count project website.
Under optimal conditions, that is, with a clear sky, no moon and located far away from any artificial light, the human eye can see stars up to magnitude (brightness) 6 or 7. This amounts to up to 14,000 bright points in the sky . What astronomers want with the international count is to calculate how many of these stars we do not see because of light pollution. For example, if where we live the limiting magnitude is 3 we will only distinguish 150 stars in the sky.
Instructions for calculating the visible magnitude from our observation point can be downloaded here in Spanish.
This is the second time that the public has been invited to participate in the star count. In the first edition, held last year, 6,624 observers from all over the world participated, including Antarctica. In 2008 the organizers hope to double the number of collaborators.
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