1 Introduction
Thank you for purchasing the SQM-LU. You will soon be on your way to collecting scientific data.
The SQM series of products have been used in the following applications:
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Quantitatively comparing the sky brightness at different astronomical observing sites.
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Documenting the evolution of light pollution.
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Setting planetarium dome illumination to mimic the skies that people are likely to experience elsewhere in the city.
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Monitoring sky brightness through the night, night-to-night, and year-to-year for astronomical observation records.
•
Determining which nights show the greatest promise for finding the ’faintest fuzzies’.
•
Calibrating the effect of sky brightness on qualitative measures such as the Bortle Scale or NELM.
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Investigating how sky brightness correlates with the solar cycle and month-to-month sunspot activity.
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Helping to provide local ground truth for future sky brightness prediction with the Clear Sky Clock.
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Helping CCD users make a correlation between the SQM reading and when the background reaches some ADC
level.
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Assisting Sea Turtle researchers in studying the amounts of light in areas where turtle hatchlings are affected by
artificial lights.
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Researching bird-song synchronization with dawn.
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Researching twilight brightness changes with the addition of external Neutral Density filters. Unihedron offers
adapters to attach such filters onto the meter.
1.1 QuickStart
1. Connect the SQM-LU meter to the computer with the supplied USB cable. Wait for any device drivers to automat-
ically load (if required). You may have to visit www.FTDIchip.com to get the latest VCP drivers if they do not get
installed automatically.
2. Ensure that your computer date and time is up-to-date.
3. Install and launch UDM (Unihedron Device Manager software supplied on the CD from your File Manager).
4. Click the “Find” button to find attached devices, then click on the SQM-LU that you connected.
5. Click on “Reading” to get a reading from the SQM-LU.
6. Logging and plotting can be done from the “Log Continuous” button.
1.1.1 Other software
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If you are using Windows, you may want to use Knightware SQM-Reader from www.knightware.biz/sqm .
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The CD contains examples of software (Perl, Python, etc.) for various functions that connect to the meter.
1.1.2 FITS integration
Some programs (listed below) gather information from the Unihedron Sky Quality meter products and insert that data
into the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) header.
•
MaxPilote (Freeware) incorporates SQM readings from an SQM-LE/SQM-LU into the FITS header while at the
same time provide constant readings in a live and updated Data Window.
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Summary of Contents for SQM-LU
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