DIY Sky Quality Meter: Conversion between Illuminance and Luminance

Asked Feb 17 '22 at 08:21

Active Feb 17 '22 at 16:49

Viewed 590 times

I am trying to create a homemade Sky Quality Meter (SQM) using a TSL2591 light sensor. This sensor measures Illumination (lux), but SQMs measure Luminance (mpsas). I have seen that there are many projects doing something similar, but each one uses a different conversion, which I don't understand.

Is there a way to do this, or to get a good approximation? Note that I am not a physicist, I am a simple developer so all this is new and unknown to me.

Thanks in advance!

Sensor info: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1980

edited Feb 17 '22 at 16:49

astrosnapper

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asked Feb 17 '22 at 08:21

Boube

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Can you explain what “SQM” means? – Peter Erwin Feb 17 '22 at 10:16
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@PeterErwin "Sky Quality Meter", a device for measuring sky brightness. See this one for example: link – Boube Feb 17 '22 at 10:37
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@PeterErwin What would go into the design of a simple sky quality meter, used to measure night sky brightness? – uhoh Feb 17 '22 at 22:02
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I think what you really want is to convert the lux to magnitude, and divide that by the field of view of the sensor, to convert to magnitude per square arcsec. And that's the measure of light pollution which you could convert to a Bortle Scale value. – Greg Miller Feb 19 '22 at 06:10

DIY Sky Quality Meter: Conversion between Illuminance and Luminance

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