All Sky View

Camera stations monitoring the sky and its brightness

A. Schmusch, M. Wolf, T. Credner


Three fisheye cameras take pictures all around the clock in the area around Stuttgart, southern Germany. The interval is five minutes at daytime and one minute in the night. The cameras were calibrated with three SQMs (Sky Quality Meter) to determine the visual brightness of the zenith in each night image. Images have the advantage af a better interpretation of the observed brightness values due to visible objects like clouds, moon, milky way, air glow and some sources of light pollution. The resulting light curves show the strong dependance of the sky brightness with time. Only with these typical light curves we are able to understand and compare single SQM measurements from further locations in this area. ASV station Schachen Live View


The first station Dotternhausen from 2017 is currently offline and must be renewed. The Heilbronn station is operated with low sensitiviy due to the light polluted urban sky, whereas Schachen is a good astronomical observing place in a rural south german area. The map shows the location of the cameras around the bright city of Stuttgart within the light pollution map by Falchi et al. 2016. Time lapse footage and brightness curves for the single nights are available at the Schachen site. A publication in german language is available. Further images from or of the ASV-Stations