ISS nocturnal images as a scientific tool against Light Pollution: Flux calibration and colors

Abstract

The potential of the pictures of the Earth taken at night from the International Space Station (ISS) with a Nikon D3s digital camera to fight against light pollution is shown. We show that RAW pictures should be used to obtain fluxes. We have developed a method to perform absolute photometric calibration measuring fluxes of the stars recorded in the pictures and also calibrated sources at earth.