Night-sky brightness and extinction at Mt Shatdzhatmaz

The photometric sky quality of Mt Shatdzhatmaz, the site of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute Caucasian Observatory 2.5-m telescope, is characterized here by the statistics of the night-time sky brightness and extinction. The data were obtained as a by-product of atmospheric optical turbulence measurements with the MASS (Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor) device conducted in 2007–2013. The factors biasing night-sky brightness measurements are considered and a technique to reduce their impact on the statistics is proposed. The single-band photometric estimations provided by MASS are easy to transform to the standard photometric bands. The median moonless night-sky brightness is 22.1, 21.1, 20.3 and 19.0 mag arcsec−2 for the B, V, R and I spectral bands, respectively. The median extinction coefficients for the same photometric bands are 0.28, 0.17, 0.13 and 0.09 mag. The best atmospheric transparency is observed in winter.