Chapel Hill, NC's night sky, measured from orbit

Satellite radiance puts Chapel Hill in the rural band. Little local light dome. Most stars are visible; the Milky Way is faint but often findable away from town lights. That's brighter than 12.6% of the 3,206 US cities in this dataset.

Note the source: a satellite reading of upward light, not a visual Bortle scale reading. The two measure related but different things.

Where to go for a darker sky near Chapel Hill

144 miles from Chapel Hill, straight-line, sits Suffolk, VA, the nearest city here with a darker sky than Chapel Hill's own rural band.

Suffolk, VA is itself still a measured city, not a designated dark-sky park, this only compares against the 3,206 places this dataset covers.

How Chapel Hill compares nationally

About 64,028 people live in Chapel Hill, NC, sized enough to appear in this dataset of 3,206 incorporated US cities. Chapel Hill places 401 of 3,206 cities in this dataset's darkest-to-brightest order.