On October 22nd at 10:00 p.m, I went into my backyard and participated in the Great Worldwide Star Count. Where I viewed Cygnus from was about 60 yards from the nearest street light and the constellation was still high enough above the trees to see. My latitude was 42.33049, longitude -82.887559. Based on the maps online at http://www.windows2universe.org/citizen_science/starcount , I determined the light pollution estimate to be Magnitude 4.
Last year for the Great Worldwide Star Count, 2427 worldwide observations were submitted from 31 different countries.
I feel that this annual event is a good estimate of where the world is at in terms of light pollution, and shows us how much of the night sky we miss out on because of it. However, I'm not really sure about what the results will do, because light pollution in today's world is hard to fight.
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