How dark is the sky in Canary Islands?
Sky darkness for 19 towns and parks in Canary Islands, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 13 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is Caldera de Taburiente National Park (21.83, Bortle 3), the brightest Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (18.87, Bortle 7). Milky Way season in Canary Islands runs March to September: on moonless nights the bright core stands clear of the horizon, climbing to about 33° at its highest.
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 Canary Islands
- Caldera de Taburiente National ParkBortle 321.83
- La PalmaBortle 321.83
- Cumbre Vieja Natural ParkBortle 321.82
- Garajonay National ParkBortle 421.62
- Timanfaya National ParkBortle 421.43
Among the places on this site. Plenty of land between them is just as dark, with no town or park to name it by.