Photographers: Christopher Kyba and Thomas Ruhtz; Christopher’s Web site
Summary Author: Christopher Kyba

The above photo was taken while making light pollution measurements over Berlin, Germany as part of the Verlust der Nacht project. It nicely illustrates the differences between natural (moonlight) and artificial night lighting. It’s obvious that artificial street lights have different color spectra from that of moonlight; some street lamps emit discrete spectral lines rather than a continuous spectrum as produced by the Sun or Moon. Note the glint of moonlight off of Langer See, a part of Berlin’s Spree River system. The high reflectivity of water at large incident angles makes it very easy to distinguish the lake from the shoreline. Photo taken on July 14, 2011 — the Moon was one day shy of being fully illuminated.