Dark Sky Places Map: Best Stargazing Spots
Map certified International Dark Sky Places: parks, reserves, sanctuaries and communities protected for stargazing. Plan a night under dark skies.
Explore this map →- 222dark-sky places
- GFZ / Spinner et al.source
- CC BY 4.0license
- 98layers to stack it with
About this layer
International Dark Sky Places are parks, reserves, sanctuaries and communities certified for protecting dark night skies, which makes them some of the best places to see the Milky Way. This layer maps 222 certified places with approximate boundaries, using a June 2024 dataset published by Spinner et al. through GFZ Data Services under CC BY 4.0.
Places certified after mid-2024 may be missing. Use the layer to plan a stargazing trip around a new moon, then add National Park Service Sites, campgrounds and Observatories to build the itinerary. Utah, Arizona and the desert Southwest have clusters of certified parks. Switching to a dark basemap makes the map itself feel like the night sky.