YozoraAtlas

How dark is the sky in Bavaria?

Sky darkness for 35 towns and parks in Bavaria, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 19 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is Bavarian Forest National Park (21.59, Bortle 4), the brightest Munich (18.70, Bortle 7). The bright core of the Milky Way never climbs clear of the horizon haze anywhere in Bavaria while the sky is fully dark; the rest of the band passes overhead, with the longest moonless nights from September to April.

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

All 35 places in Bavaria

Amber names are parks and certified dark-sky places. The figure is the Bortle class: 1 darkest, 9 city center.
Altmühltal Natural Park4Aschaffenburg5Augsburg6Augsburg-Western Woods Nature Park4Bamberg5Bavarian Forest National Park4Bavarian Rhön Nature Park4Bayreuth5Berchtesgaden National Park4Erlangen5Fichtelgebirge Nature Park4Franconian Forest Nature Park4Franconian Switzerland-Veldenstein Forest Nature Park4Frankenhöhe Nature Park4Haßberge Nature Park4Hirschwald Nature Park4Ingolstadt5Kempten5Landshut5Munich7Nagelfluhkette Nature Park4Neu-Ulm6Northern Upper Palatine Forest Nature Park4Nuremberg6Passau5Regensburg6Rhön Biosphere Reserve4Rosenheim5Schweinfurt5Spessart Nature Park4Steigerwald Nature Park4Steinwald Nature Park4Upper Bavarian Forest Nature Park4Winklmoos-Alm4Würzburg5