Fort Payne, AL: how dark is the sky here?

Fort Payne reads as rural on this dataset's scale. Little local light dome. Most stars are visible; the Milky Way is faint but often findable away from town lights. Only 4.1% of the 3,206 cities measured here read darker than Fort Payne.

This comes from a satellite measuring light radiating upward, not a person's eyes on the ground, so it isn't the same as a Bortle class, though the two track each other closely.

How far Fort Payne is from a meaningfully darker sky

41 miles from Fort Payne, straight-line, sits Fort Oglethorpe, GA, the nearest city here with a darker sky than Fort Payne's own rural band.

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

How Fort Payne compares nationally

Fort Payne, AL counts roughly 15,017 residents, among the 3,206 US cities this site tracks. Fort Payne places 133 of 3,206 cities in this dataset's darkest-to-brightest order.