Visual Astronomy

 

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 The world at night offers a wealth of stimuli and opportunities as a resource for Optics education, at all age levels and from any (formal, non formal or informal) perspective.

The starry sky and the urban nightscape provide a unique combination of pointlike sources with extremely different emission spectra and brightness levels on a generally darker, locally homogeneous background. This fact, combined with the particular characteristics of the human visual system under mesopic and scotopic conditions, provides a perfect setting for experiencing first-hand different optical phenomena of increasing levels of complexity: from the eye's point spread function to the luminance contrast threshold for source detection, from basic diffraction patterns to the intricate irradiance fluctuations due to atmospheric turbulence.

Looking at the nightscape is also a perfect occasion to raise awareness on the increasing levels of light pollution associated to the misuse of public and private artificial light at nigh, to promote a sustainable use of lighting, and to take part in worldwide citizen science campaigns.

Last but not least, night sky observing activities can be planned and developed following a very flexible schedule, allowing individual students to carry them out from home and sharing the results in the classroom as well as organizing social events and night star parties with the active implication of families and groups of the local community.

Some related works:

  • Salvador Bará, The sky within your eyes (Eye aberrations and visual Astronomy), Sky and Telescope, 126 (2), 68-71 (August, 2013). (Full text)

  • Salva Bará, Naked-eye Astronomy: Optics of the starry night skies, Proc. SPIE 9289, 12th Education and Training in Optics and Photonics Conference, 92892S (July 17, 2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2070764 (Full text)

  • Salvador Bará, Marisol Robles, Isabel Tejelo, Ramón I. Marzoa, and Héctor González, Green Laser Pointers for Visual Astronomy: How Much Power Is Enough?, Optometry and Vision Science 87 (2), 140-144 (2010). (Abstract)

  • Salvador Bará y Alejandro Suárez, El "láser verde" en Astronomía, AstronomíA, Núm. 114 Diciembre 2008, pp. 76-83 (Equipo Sirius, ed). (Full text)

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Welcome to Salva Bará´s site !   After a fruitful period of forty years at Universidade de Santiago de Compostela now I continue researching as an independent scholar.   My present work focuses on the application of Physics and Photonics methods, concepts and devices to analyze, assess and solve issues relevant to light pollution, i.e. the unwanted effects associated with the alteration of the darkness of the natural night due to the emissions of artificial light.    Light pollution is an inter-disciplinary field of knowledge that has elicited in recent years a growing interest among the scientific community. Besides the widely known consequences of the increased skyglow for science, in particular for optical astronomy, the misuse of artificial light at night has been shown to have measurable and negative side-effects on global energy consumption, wildlife, human health and on the preservation of key aspects of humankind's cultural intangible heritage. Twitter: @salvaba
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 A USC vén de poñer en acceso libre "E fixemos a luz!" (pdf) con licenza Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 Podedes descargalo dende esta ligazón   USC has released in open access the book (pdf) "E fixemos a luz!" , under license Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 You may download it using this link  
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  Salvador X. Bará, PhD   Former Profesor Titular de Universidade, Area de Óptica, at Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC),  GALICIA (Spain, European Union). Should you wish to contact me, please write to: salva.bara@usc.gal salva.bara@gmail.com   Twitter: @salvabara  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1274-8043
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