Unihedron Ethernet Enabled Sky Quality Meter

The Ethernet Enabled Sky Quality Meter with Lens by Unihedron:Finally, an ethernet-enabled SQM model for night-time sky brightness monitoring! Now you can get an affordable meter for continual, connected measuring of sky brightness for astronomers! The “Sky Quality Meter – LE” measures the brightness of the night sky in magnitudes per square arcsecond.

Designed by Dr. Doug Welch and Anthony Tekatch, the Unihedron SQM-LE can let you ind out how good the night or site REALLY is. Compare the sky brightness at different sites quantitatively and document the evolution of light pollution in your area. Set planetarium dome illumination to mimic the skies people are likely to experience elsewhere in the city. Monitor sky brightness through the night, night-to-night, and year-to-year. Determine which nights show the greatest promise for finding the ‘faintest fuzzies’! Calibrate the effect of sky brightness on qualitative measures such as the Bortle Scale. Investigate how sky brightness correlates with the solar cycle and month-to-month sunspot activity. Help provide local ground truth for future sky brightness prediction with the Clear Sky Clock. What’s more, CCD users can make a correlation between the SQM reading and when the background reaches some ADC level.

Sky Quality Meter – LE Specifications

• Ethernet connectivity
• Included applications for reading data in Java, C, Perl, Python.
• The Half Width Half Maximum (HWHM) of the angular sensitivity is ~10 degrees. The Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) is then ~20 degrees. The sensitivity to a point source ~19 degrees off-axis is a factor of 10 lower than on-axis. A point source ~20 degrees and ~40 degrees off-axis would register 3.0 and 5.0 magnitudes fainter, respectively.
• Operates from 5-6VDC adapter (included).
• Size 3.6 x 2.6 x 1.1 inches
• Maximum light sampling time: 80 seconds.
• Minimum light sampling time: 1 seconds.
• Specifications are subject to change without notice.

OPT Product Number: UH-SQM-LE