Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: A photometric mapping of the night sky brightness of the Maltese islands   Over the years, the Maltese Islands have seen a marked rise in the prevalence
of artificial lighting at night. The most evident type of light pollution
arising from this evolution in anthropogenic night-time lighting is artificial
skyglow via partial back-scattering in the atmosphere, leading to an increase
in the Night Sky Brightness (NSB). The importance of understanding and
quantifying the geographical distribution of the NSB is underscored by the
adverse impact of light pollution on various spheres, from astronomical
observation to ecology and human health. For the first time, we present a
detailed map of the NSB over the Maltese archipelago carried out with Unihedron
Sky Quality Meters. We show that the vast majority of the area of the Maltese
Islands is heavily light polluted, with 87% of the area registering a NSB $<$
20.39~mag$_{\rm SQM}$/arcsec$^2$ (Bortle Class 5 or higher) and 37.3% $<$
19.09~mag$_{\rm SQM}$/arcsec$^2$ (Bortle Class 6 or higher), with the Milky Way
being visible for only 12.8% of the area (adopting a visibility threshold $>$
20.4 - 21.29~mag$_{\rm SQM}$/arcsec$^2$; Bortle Class 4). Coastal Dark Sky
Heritage Areas on the island of Gozo retain generally darker skies than the
rest of the islands, but light pollution originating further inland is
encroaching upon and adversely affecting these sites. The methodology presented
in this study can be adopted for continued future studies in Malta as well as
for other regions.

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The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
31
The categories of this paper are: ao-sci
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The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
20
The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
0
The categories of this paper are: hep-ph
10
The categories of this paper are: q-bio
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The categories of this paper are: supr-con
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The categories of this paper are: adap-org
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The categories of this paper are: q-fin
4
The categories of this paper are: cond-mat
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The categories of this paper are: stat
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The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
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The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
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The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
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The categories of this paper are: comp-gas
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The categories of this paper are: solv-int