Parts of the video from the winning project team.
The grand prize winner of the DEVELOP VPS video presentation was Say No to the Glow: Using NASA and NOAA’s Suomi NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite to Model Artificial Sky Brightness, by a team of four participants at DEVELOP’s Wise County, Virginia location. Their study focused on this issue: "As more outdoor lighting is installed for safety and development, light pollution has become a growing problem that threatens the quality of life for humans and wildlife. The onset of light pollution in cities and dark sky areas hinders humans from seeing the stars and the Milky Way and has been linked to health disorders in humans and behavioral changes in flora and fauna. Park officials at Grand Teton National Park are concerned about light pollution’s impacts on visitor experience and the environment. Thus, in collaboration with the National Park Service and Wyoming Stargazing, our team created the Skyglow Estimation Toolbox (SET), a Python program that calculates images of artificial sky glow from the vantage point of a viewer on the ground." See the project's highlights in this video.
Mentors and advisors included Dr. L. DeWayne Cecil (NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Science & Technology), Dr. Kenton Ross (NASA Langley Research Center), and Bob VanGundy (The University of Virginia’s College at Wise).
The People’s Choice Award for the most popular video this summer goes to “Tree Health Time Machine,” conducted by three participants at the NASA Ames Research Center DEVELOP node in Moffett Field, California.
Congratulations to all who participated in the NASA DEVELOP program. By engaging in real-world issues with geospatial technologies, you are all winners!