How dark is the sky in Connecticut?
Sky darkness for 17 towns and parks in Connecticut, worked out from NASA satellite images of light at night (2025). 4 of them have skies of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead. The darkest is Orient Beach State Park (20.71, Bortle 4), the brightest New Haven (17.80, 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 Connecticut
- Orient Beach State ParkBortle 420.71
- Housatonic Meadows State ParkBortle 420.69
- Macedonia Brook State ParkBortle 420.60
- Kent Falls State ParkBortle 420.59
Among the places on this site. Plenty of land between them is just as dark, with no town or park to name it by.
Brightest city skies in Connecticut
All 17 places in Connecticut
Amber names are parks and certified dark-sky places. The figure is the Bortle class: 1 darkest, 9 city center.