A series of photographs showed what the night sky looks like over the city, village and untouched nature.

Business Insider Edition showed visualization of the Bortl scale - it serves to estimate the brightness of the night sky. Due to human activities, the sky often remains too bright even at night, so it is almost impossible to see the stars and other planets from megacities.

How different is the sky in a city from the sky over a national park or uninhabited wasteland? Here are examples of what the sky looks like at different levels on the Bortle scale.

Level 9: City Center Sky

The sky is brightly lit even at night. Under such conditions, you can only see the Moon, the nearest planets and the brightest stars.

Level 8: city sky

At night it is so bright that you can read without additional light sources. Most stars and constellations cannot be seen with the naked eye (although the brightest constellations can still be seen).

Level 7: suburban/urban skies

The sky looks light gray, the Milky Way is almost invisible. It is difficult to see the Andromeda galaxy and the star cluster M44. According to

research 2016, a third of the world's population cannot see the Milky Way even on the best nights.

Level 6: Exposed Suburban Sky

At this level, the clouds remain quite bright, the sky glows grayish. The Andromeda Galaxy is still barely visible.

Level 5: Suburban Sky

Most people live in places where the sky is level 5 or higher. Clouds in such conditions are brighter than the sky itself, the flare is visible in almost all directions. The Milky Way looks pale.

Level 4: rustic-suburban skies

The sky looks gray instead of black, the light is visible in several directions. In general terms, you can see the Milky Way, the Triangulum galaxy is partially visible.

Level 3: rustic sky

Some clouds are lit, but most of them are dark. You can consider the Milky Way and globular star clusters like M4, M5, M15 and M22.

Level 2: True Dark Sky

The Milky Way is clearly visible to the naked eye. Near the horizon, you can notice a faint glow of the atmosphere, many globular clusters are clearly visible.

Level 1: perfect dark sky

The best view of space is comparable to how Galileo saw the night sky. The Milky Way is so bright that it can cast shadows. The sky is full of stars, making faint constellations harder to see.

It is noted that although exposure does not harm a person as much as, say, chemical pollution, it still adds problems. Because the night is not dark enough, go astray biological rhythms, which can lead to various health problemsincluding sleep disorder, obesity and depression.

A map is also available on the Web, where you can see the level of sky flare in specific locations, including Russia. In large cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan, the sky is quite expected to be 8-9 levels, in smaller cities the level is 4-7, and in the regions of Siberia it is predominantly level 1.

This map makes it easy to see where the cities are: light flare is marked with shades of blue, moderate is marked with green and yellow, strong is marked with orange, red and pink, and maximum is marked with light pink and white.

Bortle Scale Map→

It is worth noting that the map was compiled taking into account the data for 2015, so by 2022 the situation in some regions could change, especially given the three years of the pandemic.