Measurements of Sky Brightness of Ege University Observatory

The big cities are shining and appear magnificent in the nights with their lights. These bright city lights come from the lightining of the public arenas, streetlights, advertisings, outdoor lightings and commercial lightings. This magnificent view arises from the inappropriate and excessive use of artificial light. This is called light pollution. We need grounds with darkness, moisture free, without light and air pollution to observe weak lights coming from stars. Surveying of this weak light which comes from celestial bodies depends on to have observatories without light pollution along with our technological capabilities. In this work, the night sky brightness at the Ege University Observatory is measured. The sky brightness is measured as approximately 19 magnitude at all azimuth for zenith angle z < 60° in the year 2010. It is determined that the increment of the sky brightness becomes 0.4, 0.8 and 0.25 magnitudes at azimuth angle 240° < a < 270°, 270° < a < 360° and 0° < a < 30° , respectively, for zenith angle 35° < z < 60°, in the year 2017. This increment of the sky brightness causes the decrease of the observation period about 1.5 hours. The measurements point out that the light pollution increases rapidly at the Ege University Observatory and hence astronomical observations is restricted