Offline Light pollution Atlas for the OsmAnd+ Android application
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If you are into astronomy, the most important thing is how dark the sky is above you. There are many resources for this, both paid and free, where you can see the level of sky illumination in any area. In my subjective opinion, the best such resource is the Light Pollution Atlas by David J. Lorenz, the source code of which can be found here.
However, the online service is not always convenient and you want to have a permanent map at hand. Since one of the most convenient navigation programs is OsmAnd+, I decided to transfer the Light Pollution Atlas to it.
To install the Light pollution Map, you do not need deep knowledge or root privileges.
First, download the Light-pollution-20xx.sqlitedb file from the Releases to your Android phone/tablet. After that you need to find out where the OsmAnd+ program data is stored. There are only two options:
- Internal memory
- Micro-SD card
If you have difficulty determining the storage, the screenshots below show how you can find out its location:
Find storage location
- You need to move the Light-pollution-20xx.sqlitedb file to this path:
/YOUR STORAGE/Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/tiles
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You need to activate the "Online maps" plugin in the OsmAnd+ settings:
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Set the Light pollution Map as the top layer:
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Everything is ready.
Light pollution Map will be displayed on top of the main map. Using the blue slider at the bottom of the screen we can adjust the layer transparency:
The Project was tested on the OsmAnd+ v4.8.4 application and Android 8/14.