Olean, NY Night Sky Brightness
Olean, NY: how dark is the sky here?
Satellite radiance puts Olean in the suburban band. Light dome dominates much of the sky. Only the brightest stars and planets stand out clearly. Olean's sky is brighter than 65.6% of the 3,206 cities in this dataset.
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 - see the Bortle scale guide for where they can disagree.
How far Olean is from a meaningfully darker sky
44 miles from Olean, straight-line, sits St. Marys, PA, the nearest city here with a darker sky than Olean's own suburban band.
St. Marys, PA is itself still a measured city, not a designated dark-sky park, this only compares against the 3,206 places this dataset covers.
How Olean compares nationally
Olean, NY has a population of about 13,614, one of 3,206 US cities of 10,000 or more residents in this dataset. Olean places 2,092 of 3,206 cities in this dataset's darkest-to-brightest order, ranked by the method in the methodology guide.