An enhanced version of the Gaia map of the brightness of the natural sky

Abstract

The GAia Map of the Brightness Of the Natural Sky (GAMBONS) is a model to map the natural night brightness of the sky in cloudless and moonless nights. It computes the star radiance from the photometric data in Gaia and Hipparcos catalogues, adding the contributions of the diffuse galactic and extragalactic light, zodiacal light and airglow, and taking into account the effects of atmospheric attenuation and scattering. The model allows computing the natural sky brightness in any given photometric band for a ground-based observer, if appropriate transformations from the Gaia bands are available. In this work we present the most recent improvements of the model, including the use of Gaia EDR3 data, the inclusion of a wide set of photometric bands and the derivation of additional sky brightness indicators, as the horizontal irradiance and the average hemispheric radiance.

Keywords

• light pollution - scattering - radiative transfer - atmospheric effects - instrumentation: photometers - site testing