I've overlayed stays on a light pollution satellite map

I think many people have never experienced and don't realize how mind-bending a clear night sky in the winter without light pollution is. You need to get pretty far from civilization but when you do you will see so many stars, colors and effects you had no idea were visible without a telescope. The first time I experienced it I couldn't believe my eyes and it redefined my perception of space.

I used to live in an RV &amp; cabins park in a very dark area, actually inside of the radius of the Very Large Array radio telescope. As part of a barter arrangement I made a website for the park. On the site I pitched the park as a destination for amateur astronomers. Come camp inside of a telescope! We put up some Google ads to that effect.<p>I don&#x27;t think they ever got a nibble from that. It turns out that the population of amateur astronomers willing to drive long distances to dark spots isn&#x27;t all that large.<p>But this is the internet, and a niche interest can have a significant following, and you&#x27;re not trying to make a bunch of money with this. So from us dark sky lovers, thanks.

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.<p>Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question of whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”<p>- Foreword to A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, 1949

Hey, very good idea and nice execution. I like that it finds my location, even without asking or requesting permission. Extra points for having a track prices option.<p>I have a couple of suggestions&#x2F;recommendations if I may:<p>- Put a Bortle filter so that hotels on specific (dark) areas can be selected. I understand this is a bit difficult but it would make an even better filtering option.<p>- Localize it, give us an option to see prices in different&#x2F;local currency. Currently it&#x27;s only visible in USD.<p>- I can see the Affiliate ID from Booking, perhaps it would be better to mention this somewhere to avoid complaints from users.<p>- Perhaps add a popup&#x2F;permission notification for accessing location (see previous point as well).<p>- Put an info&#x2F;about page so that you can give more info and also take some credit for your work.

I’ll never forget a moment from the bus trip I took across the U.S. west as a kid when we got to Montana. We had been driving for hours and got to our cabins far from everywhere late at night. A bus load of tired kids filed off, eyes half open, and then someone said “Hey, look up!”<p>Cue two dozen kids saying “oohs and ahhs” in sync. Don’t think I’ve seen such a spectacularly starry night since.

Cool site, but it really needs a legend. I can intuit that white is high light pollution because its on city centers, but how bad is green? I have no idea what I would see there.

Hmm, seems like a cool idea, but I can&#x27;t actually get it to show any hotels or anything? Probably pebkac but just FYI.

My town (Dripping Springs, TX) was pretty dark when I moved here 10 years ago. We could at least see the Milky Way back then.<p>Today it claims to be a dark sky certified community, but this seems baloney. No more Milky Way. And while the town claims to have all those regulations to protect the dark, they start right off by ignoring those rules for the schools&#x27; football fields and stuff.

Thanks for doing this! I&#x27;d really like a &quot;Search this Area&quot; button. My first instinct was to use the map to find somewhere dark, then look at stays.

Great visualization! For those in the Northeast US, Cherry Springs State Park in PA is a wonderful place to visit for night viewing (and camping). It&#x27;s one of the best places (darkest night sky) on the eastern seaboard for stargazing. We camped there in the summer and saw the Milky Way like I&#x27;d never seen before. Be sure to look at the moon phases when planning -- try to plan for a new moon so you have a dark sky: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dcnr.pa.gov&#x2F;StateParks&#x2F;FindAPark&#x2F;CherrySpringsStatePark&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;default.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dcnr.pa.gov&#x2F;StateParks&#x2F;FindAPark&#x2F;CherrySpringsSt...</a>

Edit: I misread that you&#x27;re showing light pollution, not air pollution, so disregard my comments. But maybe an idea for another site?<p>Very cool. I was buying some land a few months ago, and made a similar map of the country to help choose areas with consistently good air quality.<p>I couldn&#x27;t get the calendar to change from October, so I couldn&#x27;t check myself, but I was wondering if you adjust for seasonality. Some areas have a distinct &quot;burning season&quot; when farmers burn their fields and the air quality is significantly worse.<p>I was also wondering if you&#x27;re using publicly available sensor data. The granularity looks a lot better than what I had downloaded.

Neat idea. Is there a color legend somewhere? I don’t see one.

What’s up with North Dakota? There’s a spot in the middle of nowhere that has pollution levels on par with major metro areas.

Not getting any stays overlayed on the map. HN hug of death? API Limit?

The eastern desert ranges of California are great for seeing a clear night sky (Panamint Valley etc.). There&#x27;s even a Dark Sky Festival out there (Nov 9-12 2023). Shows up nicely on this map too.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.easternsierraobservatory.com&#x2F;california-dark-sky-festival" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.easternsierraobservatory.com&#x2F;california-dark-sky...</a>

Simpler method: just go visit central and SE Oregon.<p>* Maybe fly in to Bend. Nearby you can go up Pine Mountain to visit the observatory in the summer. Best views of the sky I&#x27;ve ever had... you&#x27;re up at around 2000 meters, away from the city, with clear air, usually. You can very easily see the milky way and SO many stars.<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;traveloregon.com&#x2F;plan-your-trip&#x2F;destinations&#x2F;lakes-reservoirs&#x2F;stargazing-at-oregons-first-dark-sky-park&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;traveloregon.com&#x2F;plan-your-trip&#x2F;destinations&#x2F;lakes-r...</a> - dark sky park near Prineville.<p>* Steens Mountain &amp; Alvord Desert - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;traveloregon.com&#x2F;things-to-do&#x2F;destinations&#x2F;parks-forests-wildlife-areas&#x2F;a-trip-to-steens-oregons-secret-mountain" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;traveloregon.com&#x2F;things-to-do&#x2F;destinations&#x2F;parks-for...</a>

Nice! I love how the date picker shows the phase of the moon.

The Michigan tourism folks have become focused on dark sky tourism. Here&#x27;s a website that tells you the best parks in the state for sky gazing.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.michigan.org&#x2F;darksky" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.michigan.org&#x2F;darksky</a>

What am I missing here? I see a dark sky map. That&#x27;s it. No hotels or anything like that?

This itnerant stargazer says...awesome :) I&#x27;ve been paying close attention to light pollution (and access to a telescope or stargazing tour services, so there&#x27;s that too :p) while traveling internationally recently.

Nothing against the site, I just hate this usage of &quot;stays&quot;.

Really nice idea, but I&#x27;m having an issue with the date-picker; can&#x27;t change the month, so it&#x27;s stuck in October (I&#x27;m using brave browser on android)

I moved from Austin to rural Texas ~2.5 years ago and it&#x27;s so dark, it was disturbing at first. After a while you get used to it but it&#x27;s still SO awesome seeing the Milky Way many nights.<p>This past summer, I&#x27;d be outside working late (necessary in 100F+ heat) and turn off the lights, wait a minute and look up.<p>It was breathtaking.. and we&#x27;re not even in the darkest place.

Feature request: Any chance of a &quot;back in time&quot; slider? I&#x27;m going camping this weekend for a bike race in Utah. Even there I don&#x27;t recall being impressed by the stars there, compared to my childhood in Kansas, where I could see the Milky Way from my front yard. It would be interesting to compare this to what it looked like 30 years ago.

What strikes me most is that the correlation with population is still weaker than expected - at least it <i>appears</i> (eyeballing it) that Europe has a larger&#x2F;more extreme light pollution than India and China combined.<p>It also shows the lack of development of eastern Europe&#x27;s rural areas. The contrast from one country to the next is quite strong.

One thing that is interesting about this is how one may not need to travel to some far and remote place to experience low light pollution.<p>In the map of the UK, for example, low light pollution can be experienced within a 2 hr train ride from London to Wales, Devon or Cornwall. Similarly for France or Spain.<p>Central Europe and Eastern US has little such luck, though.

Nice idea, but it didn&#x27;t work great for me. It mostly finds hotels in heavily light polluted areas. And in the tiny out-of-the way places where light pollution is minimal, it didn&#x27;t show me any lodging options. But going to Google maps for the same spots, there are definitely options.

Slightly off-topic, but I wonder what the big circle of light pollution is in Western Brazil, west-southwest of Manaus? It looks like it&#x27;s centered over Urucu, which Google reveals is home to a natural gas pipeline. I wonder if there was a fire there or something when the satellite passed?

It&#x27;s broken on FF&#x2F;Linux. I just flashing garbage that would probably trigger epilepsy if I had one.

This is wonderful!<p>One suggestion is to also include probability of cloud-cover at that time of the year.

Excellent idea and I encourage all who&#x27;ve not seen the moonless stars on a clear summer night, do it at least once. It affected me much more than like seeing Vienna or Paris for the first time, and I love those cities.

If you want outdoor stays your much better off using a large outdoor travel specialist sites like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pitchup.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pitchup.com&#x2F;</a>

Very cool, it would be helpful to have a key for what the colors mean. I can deduce that white, is little to no darkness, and shades of green mean dark, but it would help to give that little context.

Airbnb is a pile of sh!t that will screw over travelers on a whim. Please DO NOT PROMOTE THAT COMPANY.<p>Use hotels. They&#x27;re cleaner, cheaper, and full of amenities. Plus, you don&#x27;t have to clean before you leave!<p>Edit: And, before anyone downvotes me too much, think about the fact that Airbnb does NOT audit any stays or even verify proof of ownership of the property and&#x2F;or the right to sublet.<p>If you do complain, Airbnb will give you the runaround for months in end, perpetually pushing goalposts further down the field, even amid a slew of overwhelming evidence.<p>Yes, this is empirical data I&#x27;m working off of. And, no, it wasn&#x27;t a one-off event.<p>Imagine all the crap sold on ebay that isn&#x27;t vetted. Now, apply that to a vacation rental and you have the company in question.

As long as y&#x27;all show up before dark. That&#x27;s the courtesy.

This is very cool. I have been working on a way to get a hestmap of distance from roads to plan Backcountry hiking trips but this light pollution data seems much simpler.

Related: I released an AirBnB search engine optimised for desktop a few months ago.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stay100.app" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stay100.app</a>

Majority of Texas has no data when you zoom in:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;cFYZ5pQ.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;cFYZ5pQ.png</a>

It&#x27;s a shame the site is not really usable on mobile.

I stayed in shelter cove recently to see the perseid meteor shower. Definitely recommend staying in a similar remote area with low light pollution.

Where I grew up I could see the milky way over my house. I didn’t realize how lucky that was. Now with urban sprawl the stars are fading there.

Please share the prompt!!<p>&#x2F;s it is so beautiful. Really helps to understand the shape of humanity at a global scale. Middle East and Korea made me reflect.

You&#x27;ve got a bunch of places all placed at 0 latitude 0 longitude, saying &quot;null&quot;. You may want to check your data sources.

Needs labels for the light pollution scale, it&#x27;s not immediately obvious.<p>A grayscale mode would be even better (thought less pretty at first sight).

some feedback:<p>- a legend of the colors would be great, explaining in words what they mean, what I might expect - date range search is a bit odd for this, I guess if I was aligning with astronomical events, but if I&#x27;m just looking for nice places to stay. - Mine defaults to my location, seattle. I&#x27;ve seen 3 total astronimical events here in 13 years due to clouds.

I am confused how do I see the places I can stay?

The perfect overlay map to find the ideal cabin in the woods. I&#x27;d love to be able to overlay this on Zillow or Airbnb.

I like how the map shows the lights from drilling platforms out in places like the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.

Maybe doesn&#x27;t work in Firefox? I just see a map with what I guess is light pollution overlaid but no hotels.

Currency seems wrong when pointing this where I live in Japan, says that hostels are going for $5000 a night lol.

What on earth is going on in Närpes in coastal&#x2F;rural Finland? It looks like it has extreme light pollution?

Whats going on in Venezuela in Maturin??

The Track Prices button hovers over the calender so you can&#x27;t change the month. Otherwise pretty cool!

This website is unusable in iPhone 14 Pro Max in Safari.<p>Would be interested in something similar for the 8th April Eclipse.

Doesn&#x27;t seem to work. Just asks for my email address and won&#x27;t even accept one when I put it in.

Is it possible to add a legend? What do these colors represent in terms of visibility?

Brilliant! Wish it had a color legend. But I always wanted a site like this.

Totally lost on the UI sorry can you explain how to operate the thing ?

Typo in the title: overlayed ‐&gt; overlaid

Terrible. The page froze Firefox and I had to reboot my laptop.

Is there a legend for the shading? I wasn&#x27;t quite sure what shades of color meant what amounts of light pollution.

there is apparently a huge difference between the night sky in the Northern vs Southern hemisphere. whoever spent their life in the North has no idea how beautiful the Southern sky is.