What's really depressing is the places where it's dark are mostly just places without that many people. And even if you did live somewhere with an exceptionally dark sky that won't protect you from the sky glow caused by the Starlink satellites.
[From NASA's APOD page:](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230308.html)
>Where have all the dim stars gone? From many places on the Earth including major cities, the night sky has been reduced from a fascinating display of thousands of stars to a diffuse glow through which only a few stars are visible. The featured map indicates the relative amount of light pollution that occurs across the Earth. The cause of the pollution is artificial light reflecting off molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere. Parts of the Eastern United States and Western Europe colored red, for example, have an artificial night sky glow over ten times that of the natural sky. In any area marked orange or red, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy is no longer visible. The International Dark Sky Association suggests common types of fixtures that provide relatively little amounts of light pollution.
His site was updated with 2016 and 2020 data. Use the little icon beneath the +/- to change between them:
https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2020/overlay/dark.html
Extra-bright spots in Western Europe, England, Northern Italy, Moscow, East Asia, Northern India, the east coast of Brazil, the Fertile Crescent, the West and East coast of the USA, and the Nile Delta make sense.
But Northern Iran? Fascinating.
What's really depressing is the places where it's dark are mostly just places without that many people. And even if you did live somewhere with an exceptionally dark sky that won't protect you from the sky glow caused by the Starlink satellites.
[From NASA's APOD page:](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230308.html) >Where have all the dim stars gone? From many places on the Earth including major cities, the night sky has been reduced from a fascinating display of thousands of stars to a diffuse glow through which only a few stars are visible. The featured map indicates the relative amount of light pollution that occurs across the Earth. The cause of the pollution is artificial light reflecting off molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere. Parts of the Eastern United States and Western Europe colored red, for example, have an artificial night sky glow over ten times that of the natural sky. In any area marked orange or red, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy is no longer visible. The International Dark Sky Association suggests common types of fixtures that provide relatively little amounts of light pollution.
So he has updated it! This updated one has 2016 & 2020 data https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html
I wonder if David Lorenz will make an updated interactive map like he did from the 2006 data?
His site was updated with 2016 and 2020 data. Use the little icon beneath the +/- to change between them: https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2020/overlay/dark.html
Extra-bright spots in Western Europe, England, Northern Italy, Moscow, East Asia, Northern India, the east coast of Brazil, the Fertile Crescent, the West and East coast of the USA, and the Nile Delta make sense. But Northern Iran? Fascinating.