How dark is the sky in Lapland?
Sky darkness for 8 towns and parks in Lapland, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 6 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is Lemmenjoki National Park (21.88, Bortle 3), the brightest Rovaniemi (17.07, Bortle 8). The bright core of the Milky Way never climbs clear of the horizon haze anywhere in Lapland while the sky is fully dark; the rest of the band passes overhead, with the longest moonless nights from October to February.
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
Darkest skies in Lapland
- Lemmenjoki National ParkBortle 321.88
- Pallas-Yllästunturi National ParkBortle 321.81
- Riisitunturi National ParkBortle 321.78
- Urho Kekkonen National ParkBortle 321.78
- Pyhä-Luosto National ParkBortle 421.69
Among the places on this site. Plenty of land between them is just as dark, with no town or park to name it by.