What the night sky looks like over Kansas City, MO

Satellite radiance puts Kansas City in the urban band. Sky glow overhead most nights. Typically only planets, the Moon, and a handful of the brightest stars are visible. That's brighter than 96.3% of the 3,206 US cities in this dataset.

The number comes from orbit, not a stargazer's logbook, so treat it as an estimate of sky glow rather than a certified Bortle class.

How far Kansas City is from a meaningfully darker sky

Gladstone, MO, about 6 miles away as the crow flies, measures in the suburban edge band, one step darker than Kansas City. Actual driving distance will run longer than that straight-line figure.

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

Kansas City against the rest of the dataset

Kansas City, MO has a population of about 516,032, one of 3,206 US cities of 10,000 or more residents in this dataset. Among all 3,206 cities here, Kansas City ranks 3,070 from darkest to brightest, 1 being the darkest measured.