Measurement of night sky brightness in southern Australia
Daniel Hampf, Gavin Rowell, Neville Wild, Tristan Sudholz, Dieter, Horns, Martin Tluczykont

TL;DR
This study measures night sky brightness at Fowler's Gap in Australia, providing essential data for assessing its suitability for Cherenkov telescopes and detectors, and compares it with other established sites.
Contribution
It presents new measurements of night sky brightness at a potential Cherenkov telescope site in Australia using a portable instrument, including spectral analysis and comparison with other sites.
Findings
Night sky brightness levels are comparable to established sites in Namibia and La Palma.
Dark sky regions have about 2 x 10^12 photons/(s sr m^2) between 300-650 nm.
Spectral analysis shows dominance of longer wavelengths, enabling filter-based noise reduction.
Abstract
Night sky brightness is a major source of noise both for Cherenkov telescopes as well as for wide-angle Cherenkov detectors. Therefore, it is important to know the level of night sky brightness at potential sites for future experiments. The measurements of night sky brightness presented here were carried out at Fowler's Gap, a research station in New South Wales, Australia, which is a potential site for the proposed TenTen Cherenkov telescope system and the planned wide-angle Cherenkov detector system HiSCORE. A portable instrument was developed and measurements of the night sky brightness were taken in February and August 2010. Brightness levels were measured for a range of different sky regions and in various spectral bands. The night sky brightness in the relevant wavelength regime for photomultipliers was found to be at the same level as measured in similar campaigns at the…
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