How dark is the sky in Brandenburg?
Sky darkness for 15 towns and parks in Brandenburg, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 11 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is the Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide (21.65, Bortle 4), the brightest Potsdam (19.54, Bortle 5). The bright core of the Milky Way never climbs clear of the horizon haze anywhere in Brandenburg while the sky is fully dark; the rest of the band passes overhead, with the longest moonless nights from September to March.
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 Brandenburg
- the Kyritz-Ruppiner HeideBortle 421.65
- Stechlin-Ruppiner Land Nature ParkBortle 421.61
- Uckermark Lakes Nature ParkBortle 421.60
- Westhavelland Nature ParkBortle 421.59
- Lower Lusatian Ridge Nature ParkBortle 421.49
Among the places on this site. Plenty of land between them is just as dark, with no town or park to name it by.