Christopher Kyba and his co-authors were recently honoured with the “Leon Gaster Award”. With this annual award, the Society of Light and Lighting has recognized their publication “Direct measurement of the contribution of street lighting to satellite observations of nighttime light emissions from urban areas“ as "the best paper concerning lighting applications" published 2021 in the journal "Lighting Research & Technology". Among the co-authors of the papers are former GFZ-researcher Helga Kuechly and Andreas Ruby, who was then an intern for the project at GFZ and has now joined the Geomorphology section as a PhD student.

The award-winning paper evaluates a hitherto unique experiment in which the brightness of 14,000 of the lights from the street lighting system in Tucson (USA) were changed, and their relative contribution was measured via satellite. More details can be found in the respective GFZ press release.

“I am deeply honoured to receive this award, which was established in 1929 and recognises the role that Leon Gaster played as founder of the Illuminating Engineering Society (now named Society of Light and Lighting). I would particularly like to thank the Helmholtz Society, because without a Helmholtz ERC Recognition Award I would never have been able to write the paper.“

Christopher Kyba is a post-doc scientist in Section 1.4 Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics, studying artificial light at night, with a focus on quantifying the light emissions from cities, and how they are changing. He is the initiator of several citizen science projects related to this topic including the Helmholtz funded “Nachtlichter” project, and the “Loss of the Night app” (Android/iOS). He believes these projects provide a critically needed complement to satellite data.

(Edited: Publication year 2021, UD, 09.06.2022)

Further information:

https://www.buergerschaffenwissen.de/projekt/verlust-der-nacht-app

Original publication:C.C.M. Kyba, A. Ruby, H.U. Kuechly, B. Kinzey, N. Miller, J. Sanders, J. Barentine, R. Kleinodt, B. Espey. Direct measurement of the contribution of street lighting to satellite observations of nighttime light emissions from urban areas. Lighting Research & Technology (LR&T), online October 2020 (print edition 2021). DOI: 10.1177/1477153520958463 
 

Scientific contact:

Dr. Christopher Kyba
Section 1.4 Remonte Sensing and Geoinformatics
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Telegrafenberg
14473 Potsdam
Phone: +49 331 288 28973
Email: kyba@gfz-potsdam.de