On Thursday, September 22, the Bochum MINT cluster organized a

public event about Bochum's light at night, which took place at Planetarium Bochum. The event kicked off with a short presentation by Planetarium director Susanne Hüttemeister, which was followed by a 40 minute talk by GI postdoc Christopher Kyba about the impacts of light pollution and how it can be minimized. This talk was also the

official kickoff of a "Nachtlichter" citizen science measurement campaign in Bochum. The aim of the campaign is to examine the extent to which advertisers are following the

new energy supply protection law, which requires most illuminated signs to be turned off after 22:00.

During a 30 minute break, members of the MINT cluster presented their work at tables in the Planetarium foyer. The evening ended with a podium discussion between Kyba, Kriminalhauptkommisar Sebastian Meyer (from Kommissariat „Kriminalprävention/Opferschutz“ ), and Sebastian Leiding (Experte für "smarte Beleuchtungskonzepte" bei Stadtwerke Bochum Netz), which was moderated by Hüttemeister. The panelists discussed the future of lighting and light pollution reduction in Bochum.

Christopher Kyba has joined the Interdisciplinary GI Science Research Group as Postdoc in September 2022. He comes to the GI from the Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ in Potsdam, where he was employed since 2014. He is a physicist by training, and his research is related to quantification of artificial light in the outdoor environment. His current research focuses mainly on two questions: what underlying lighting applications are responsible for the light seen by satellite, and what causes observed changes in artificial light emissions over different time scales. He addresses these questions using a variety of data sources, including satellites, aerial photography, ground-based observation of skyglow, and volunteered geographic information from citizen scientists. He has led the creation of several apps and data portals for citizen scientists, including the Nachtlichter and Verlust der Nacht citizen science apps, as well as the My Sky at Night and Radiance Light Trends web applications. Earlier this year, he was recognized by the Society of Light at Lighting with the Leon Gaster Award for an innovative remote sensing experiment involving smart street lighting, and this summer the Nachtlichter project was declared a Winner in the Science and Innovation Management category by the Falling Walls foundation.