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Light Pollution Map
Find dark skies for stargazing & astrophotography:Bortle, Milky Way, moon phrase
Find truly dark skies for stargazing and astrophotography, and know whether tonight is worth the drive. A light pollution map, a stargazing forecast and a Milky Way planner in one app. Light Pollution Map shows you where the night sky is still dark, how dark it is, and which night to go. REAL SKY-BRIGHTNESS DATA, NOT A GUESS The dark sky map is built from the World Atlas 2024 sky-brightness dataset — the reference used by dark sky researchers — plus NASA VIIRS night-lights imagery. Tap anywhere on Earth and get the Bortle class, sky brightness in mag/arcsec², the artificial-to-natural light ratio and a 0–100 darkness score for that exact spot. Tiles you browse are cached, so the light pollution map keeps working where there is no signal. THE MAP • Worldwide light pollution overlay with adjustable opacity • Standard, satellite and hybrid base maps, all in a dark theme built for night use • Tap any point for Bortle class, SQM brightness, limiting magnitude, elevation and distance from you • Search a city, national park, address or raw coordinates • Measure the distance between any two points on the map • Save dark sky spots to folders and open them in your maps app for directions IS TONIGHT WORTH IT? One stargazing score from 0–100 combining sky darkness, moon phase and cloud cover, with the numbers behind it: • Sunset, astronomical dark, sunrise, golden hour and blue hour • Moon phase, illumination, moonrise and moonset • Cloud cover, transparency, seeing, humidity, dew point, wind and visibility • A 24-hour cloud chart and a 7-day outlook PLAN THE MILKY WAY • Galactic core rise, transit and maximum altitude for any night • The best window — core above 10°, astronomical night, moon below the horizon • An overnight core-altitude chart, noon to noon • A moon calendar that marks the genuinely dark, moonless nights of each month • Meteor shower peaks with ZHR and how much moonlight will spoil them • Aurora forecast with the NOAA KP index and your latitude's odds FIND A DARK SKY SITE NEAR YOU • Dark Sky Finder scans 200 km around you and ranks the darkest reachable spots by real sky brightness • 383 dark sky destinations worldwide — certified parks and reserves, national parks, observatory sites and remote desert, island and mountain locations • Sort by darkest or by nearest, then get directions FOR ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY • NPF-rule and 500-rule maximum exposure before stars trail • Hyperfocal distance for nightscapes with foreground • Star-trail intervalometer with frame count and a live arc estimate • Manual-focus guide plus a full-screen focus target for nailing infinity focus IN THE FIELD • Observation log with conditions, equipment, exposure settings, notes and photos • Trip planner with the moon phase for the date, a driving route and an equipment checklist • Compass with heading, coordinates, altitude and GPS accuracy • Home-screen widgets for tonight's darkness, the moon phase and the full forecast • Alerts for new moons, meteor shower peaks, clear nights and aurora Whether you are an astrophotographer chasing the Milky Way, an amateur astronomer hunting deep-sky objects, or you just want to show your kids a night sky with stars in it — this stargazing app works out where to go, and when. FREE AND PREMIUM Free: the light pollution map, tonight's stargazing conditions, the Milky Way and moon planner, the dark sky destination directory and three saved locations. Premium: unlimited saved locations, every map layer, offline tiles, the aurora forecast, observation logs and trip planning. DATA SOURCES Sky brightness: World Atlas 2024 (David Lorenz). Night lights: NASA VIIRS Black Marble. Weather: Open-Meteo. Aurora: NOAA SWPC. Maps: OpenStreetMap contributors and Esri. Your location stays on your device — sent only to fetch the forecast, place name or map tile for the spot you are looking at. No account, nothing stored on a server.