DarkSky Oregon

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Oregon's Night Skies

Sky Brightness Map - Oregon

Large areas of Oregon still have dark skies at night -- the green, purple, and especially the black areas in the map have  dark, Milky Way skies. The white, red and yellow areas have light-polluted skies in which few stars are visible.

The map shows the amount of skyglow directly overhead at each spot. The amount of skyglow is derived from night time satellite images, which were taken at about 2AM during the year 2022. The map shows county boundaries, main roads and the urban growth boundaries of Oregon cities. Each city lies under a dome of skyglow that extends far outward, caused by wasted light, escaping upward and scattered by the atmosphere.

Here are two links for finding dark-sky locations:
www.lightpollutionmap.info
www.darkskyfinder.com

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Oregon Parks and Recreation Camping & Dark Skies Report

Summary:

This analysis concludes that OPRD is better endowed with potential dark sky park locations than previously believed.

This is an update of a GIS project by IDA Oregon to identify those Oregon Parks and Recreation Department properties that could qualify as International Dark Sky Parks. Qualification as a Dark Sky Park is based in part on meeting a required level of night sky darkness. That darkness is achieved in areas that are relatively unaffected by light pollution. Another requirement is that people are allowed to be present at night, so we limit the analysis to properties that allow camping. This analysis uses skyglow models derived from night time images acquired by a NASA satellite sensor (VIIRS) to estimate how dark the night sky is at each location.

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