Sky Quality Meter-LR
An affordable RS232-meter for continual, connected measuring sky brightness for astronomers! The "Sky Quality Meter-LR" measures the brightness of the night sky in magnitudes per square arcsecond with unprecedented sensitivity in a handheld meter!
Uses
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Find out how good the night or site really is.
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Compare the sky brightness at different sites quantitatively.
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Document the evolution of light pollution in your area.
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Monitor sky brightness through the night, night-to-night, and year-to-year.
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Determine which nights show the greatest promise for finding the 'faintest fuzzies'!
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Calibrate the effect of sky brightness on qualitative measures such as the Bortle Scale.
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Investigate how sky brightness correlates with the solar cycle and month-to-month sunspot activity.
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CCD users can make a correlation between the SQM reading and when the background reaches some ADC level.
Deployment-
Legacy computer interface installations.
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MODEM interface installations.
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Simple electronic interface projects.
Features
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Sky brightness displayed in visual magnitudes per square arcsecond.
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Infrared blocking filter restricts measurement to visual bandpass.
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Temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit as well as model number and serial number can be displayed with different button press sequence.
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Precision readings at even the darkest sites.
- Field-upgradeable firmware
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Open protocol document.
- RS232 connectivity
- Included applications for reading data in Perl.
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The Half Width Half Maximum (HWHM) of the angular sensitivity is ~10°.
- The sensitivity to a point source ~19° off-axis is a factor of 10 lower than on-axis.
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Maximum light sampling time: 80 seconds.
- Minimum light sampling time: 1 seconds.
Delivery contents-
Sky Quality Meter-LR
- Users manual
- Software
- 6ft RS232 straight through cable
- International AC adapter
- Calibration sheet indicating calibration values
Products specifications
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Height
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3.6" (92 mm) |
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Width
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2.6" (67 mm) |
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Thickness
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1.1" (28 mm) |
