‘Bright night’ glowing sky mystery solved

On rare occasions, the nighttime sky at Earth’s temperate latitudes becomes bright enough, even on moonless nights, for people to read a book. These mysterious events— termed “bright nights” and reported for centuries—aren’t related to the glows of aurorae.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

‘Bright night’ glowing sky mystery solved

On rare occasions, the nighttime sky at Earth’s temperate latitudes becomes bright enough, even on moonless nights, for people to read a book. These mysterious events— termed “bright nights” and reported for centuries—aren’t related to the glows of aurorae.

more…

> That airglow arises when individual gas atoms—previously created when ultraviolet light blasted gas molecules apart—later recombine, the researchers explain.

PMSL.

You see why?

We’re talking the destruction of ozone here, a la CFCs. So CFCs have a big effect on how well the big ground-based telescopes can see the cosmos. This helps me understand why views from the same telescope under what ought to be identical seeing conditions on different nights give different brightnesses. The differences from night to night are so great that photometry of astronomical objects from the ground cannot be used without referring to a global gridlike network of reference stars.