How dark is the sky in Germany?
Sky darkness for 265 towns and parks in Germany, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 89 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is Pellworm (21.79, Bortle 3), the brightest Berlin (18.42, Bortle 7).
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
Darkest skies in Germany
- PellwormSchleswig-Holstein · Bortle 321.79
- SpiekeroogLower Saxony · Bortle 321.70
- Müritz National ParkMecklenburg-Vorpommern · Bortle 421.68
- Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National ParkMecklenburg-Vorpommern · Bortle 421.68
- the Kyritz-Ruppiner HeideBrandenburg · Bortle 421.65
Among the places on this site. Plenty of land between them is just as dark, with no town or park to name it by.
Darkest place in each state of Germany
| State | Places | Dark places Bortle 1 to 4 | Darkest place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baden-Württemberg | 29 places | 5 dark | Southern Black Forest Nature Park21.32 · Bortle 4 |
| Bavaria | 35 places | 19 dark | Bavarian Forest National Park21.59 · Bortle 4 |
| Berlin | 1 place | 0 dark | Berlin18.42 · Bortle 7 |
| Brandenburg | 15 places | 11 dark | the Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide21.65 · Bortle 4 |
| Bremen | 2 places | 0 dark | Bremerhaven19.34 · Bortle 6 |
| Hamburg | 1 place | 0 dark | Hamburg18.44 · Bortle 7 |
| Hesse | 16 places | 5 dark | Hessian Rhön Nature Park21.53 · Bortle 4 |
| Lower Saxony | 34 places | 15 dark | Spiekeroog21.70 · Bortle 3 |
| Mecklenburg-Vorpommern | 13 places | 8 dark | Müritz National Park21.68 · Bortle 4 |
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 69 places | 5 dark | Arnsberg Forest Nature Park21.19 · Bortle 4 |
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 16 places | 7 dark | Volcanic Eifel Nature Park21.27 · Bortle 4 |
| Saarland | 3 places | 1 dark | Saar-Hunsrück Nature Park21.02 · Bortle 4 |
| Saxony | 8 places | 2 dark | Saxon Switzerland National Park21.30 · Bortle 4 |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 6 places | 3 dark | Harz/Saxony-Anhalt Nature Park21.44 · Bortle 4 |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 11 places | 6 dark | Pellworm21.79 · Bortle 3 |
| Thuringia | 6 places | 2 dark | Thuringian Forest Nature Park21.50 · Bortle 4 |