How dark is the sky in Rhineland-Palatinate?
Sky darkness for 16 towns and parks in Rhineland-Palatinate, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 7 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is Volcanic Eifel Nature Park (21.27, Bortle 4), the brightest Ludwigshafen am Rhein (18.89, Bortle 7). The bright core of the Milky Way never climbs clear of the horizon haze anywhere in Rhineland-Palatinate while the sky is fully dark; the rest of the band passes overhead, with the longest moonless nights from September to April.
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 Rhineland-Palatinate
- Volcanic Eifel Nature ParkBortle 421.27
- Soonwald-Nahe Nature ParkBortle 421.25
- Hunsrück-Hochwald National ParkBortle 421.24
- German-Luxembourg Nature ParkBortle 421.22
- Palatinate Forest Nature ParkBortle 421.12
Among the places on this site. Plenty of land between them is just as dark, with no town or park to name it by.