How dark is the sky in Greece?
Sky darkness for 67 towns and parks in Greece, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 20 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is Samaria National Park (21.71, Bortle 3), the brightest Athens (17.78, Bortle 8).
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 Greece
- Samaria National ParkCrete · Bortle 321.71
- Rodopi Mountain Range National ParkEast Macedonia and Thrace · Bortle 421.68
- North Pindos National ParkEpirus · Bortle 421.60
- Vikos-Aoös National ParkEpirus · Bortle 421.59
- Prespa National ParkWest Macedonia · Bortle 421.57
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 region of Greece
| Region | Places | Dark places Bortle 1 to 4 | Darkest place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attica | 7 places | 1 dark | Sounio National Park20.51 · Bortle 4 |
| Central Greece | 6 places | 2 dark | Parnassos National Park21.30 · Bortle 4 |
| Central Macedonia | 12 places | 4 dark | Mount Olympus National Park21.34 · Bortle 4 |
| Crete | 4 places | 1 dark | Samaria National Park21.71 · Bortle 3 |
| East Macedonia and Thrace | 9 places | 3 dark | Rodopi Mountain Range National Park21.68 · Bortle 4 |
| Epirus | 6 places | 4 dark | North Pindos National Park21.60 · Bortle 4 |
| Ionian Islands | 2 places | 1 dark | Aenos National Park21.48 · Bortle 4 |
| North Aegean | 2 places | 0 dark | Chios20.10 · Bortle 5 |
| Peloponnese | 4 places | 0 dark | Argos19.82 · Bortle 5 |
| South Aegean | 1 place | 0 dark | Rhodes19.61 · Bortle 5 |
| Thessaly | 4 places | 0 dark | Karditsa19.62 · Bortle 5 |
| West Greece | 7 places | 3 dark | Chelmos-Vouraikos National Park21.46 · Bortle 4 |
| West Macedonia | 3 places | 1 dark | Prespa National Park21.57 · Bortle 4 |