With the help of amateur astronomers we are beginning to test the data gathering for the StreetSpectra project. Citizens belonging to Agrupación Astronómica de Madrid (AAM), AstroHenares and Agrupación Astronómica Madrid Sur (AAMS) have received a talk, the manual (in Spanish) and a hand on tutorial on how to take pictures of street lamps spectra and how to identify them. These beta testers were provided with a transmission grating to convert their smartphones in spectrographs.
The data gathered by the collaborators will help researchers to have a map of the street illumination. The amount, brightness, location and kind of lamps could be used to model the light pollution in our urban areas and its impact at long distances.
The data (pictures and location) are being gathered with the epicollect5 app for smartphones. The first results can be browsed at https://five.epicollect.net/project/action-street-spectra.
