YozoraAtlas

How dark is the sky in Lower Austria?

Sky darkness for 12 towns and parks in Lower Austria, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 9 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is the Eisenwurzen (21.68, Bortle 4), the brightest Wiener Neustadt (19.57, Bortle 5). Milky Way season in Lower Austria runs May to July: on moonless nights the bright core stands clear of the horizon, climbing to about 13° at its highest.

19 Bortle class, 1 pristine to 9 city center park or dark-sky place city

Numbers like 21.95 or 16.97 are the brightness of the sky overhead on a clear, moonless night, in mag/arcsec². The scale runs backwards: a lower number means a brighter sky, from about 22 for a natural sky to about 17 in a city center.
How the readings are made

NASA satellite night-lights map of Lower Austria with every place marked

Darkest skies in Lower Austria

  1. the EisenwurzenBortle 421.68
  2. Ötscher-Tormäuer Nature ParkBortle 421.60
  3. Falkenstein Nature ParkBortle 421.44
  4. Thayatal National ParkBortle 421.40
  5. Buchenberg Nature ParkBortle 421.10

Among the places on this site. Plenty of land between them is just as dark, with no town or park to name it by.

Brightest city skies in Lower Austria

  1. Wiener NeustadtBortle 519.57
  2. Sankt PöltenBortle 519.81
  3. BadenBortle 519.96

All 12 places in Lower Austria

Amber names are parks and certified dark-sky places. The figure is the Bortle class: 1 darkest, 9 city center.
Baden5Blockheide Nature Park4Buchenberg Nature Park4Danube-Auen National Park4Falkenstein Nature Park4Hohe Wand Nature Park4Mannersdorf-Wüste Nature Park4Sankt Pölten5Thayatal National Park4Wiener Neustadt5the Eisenwurzen4Ötscher-Tormäuer Nature Park4