What is this project about?

Street Spectra is a citizen science project to map and characterize public lighting sources. Volunteers use a low cost diffraction grating on top of their smartphones’ camera to take pictures of the street lamps and their emission spectra.

The resulting images allow street lamps classification by comparison with example pictures of well known lighting systems.

The creation of the project has been motivated by the global switch out of the older street lighting to new LEDs. The database is considered the primary output of the project. It is public and will allow scientists to study the effects of this change on technology onto light pollution.

Street Spectra joined the ACTION team as pilot initiative at the beginning of 2019. It has used epicollect5 for gathering the information although an ad hoc mobile application to improve citizens’ experience.

Join Street Spectra team to fight light pollution and allow stars to awake while the rest of the world sleeps!

Have a look at the reports developed througout the ACTION project:

• Tutorial to identify the spectra of common street lamps – Spanish version
• ACTION App: final version of one simple device to characterise street lamps spectra
• Teaching Materials
• Peer-reviewed article: Synthetic RGB photometry of bright stars: definition of the standard photometric system and UCM library of spectrophotometric spectra
• Peer -reviewed article: Multispectral estimation of retinal photoreceptoral inputs
• Peer-reviewed article: Standardized spectral and radiometric calibration of consumer cameras
• Peer-reviewed article: Monitoring Long-Term Trends in the Anthropogenic Night Sky Brightness