About Nightscape
Nightscape is a working prototype of a Dark Sky Quality Measurement & Data Visualisation Dashboard for County Kerry, built by ABL Media Group.
What this is
It's a demonstration of the dashboard described in Kerry County Council's Request for Tenders (eTenders resourceId 8642014). Rather than describe the system in words, we built a live one, so you can click through exactly how sky-quality data would be visualised, contributed, validated and reported for the Kerry International Dark Sky Reserve.
What it demonstrates
- Sky-quality visualisation — a live, interactive map of 11 monitoring stations with current and historical readings.
- Multi-source data — fixed-station streams alongside ad-hoc community and partner submissions.
- Secure submission & validation — automated checks plus a human review queue before anything is published.
- Interpretive content — the Bortle scale, what you can see, and the best window to stargaze each night.
- Customisable reporting — certification-ready summaries and CSV export for any station and period.
- Branding — aligned with the Dark Sky International identity, ready to sit inside the Discover Kerry platform.
About the data
The readings are demonstration data: the sensor network is not yet deployed, so Nightscape simulates plausible sky-quality values for each station from real astronomy — the actual moon phase and the sun's position for the site and moment — layered on each location's known darkness. When real sky-quality meters are installed, the same dashboard reads their live feeds instead. Nothing here is presented as a live official measurement.
Who built it
ABL Media Group is a Dublin data & software studio. We build fast, data-driven web tools, and this is how we'd approach the Kerry dashboard. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Kerry County Council, the Kerry International Dark Sky Reserve or Dark Sky International.