Palm Desert, CA Night Sky Brightness
Palm Desert, CA: how dark is the sky here?
Palm Desert reads as suburban on this dataset's scale. Light dome dominates much of the sky. Only the brightest stars and planets stand out clearly. Only 64.4% of the 3,206 cities measured here read darker than Palm Desert.
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.
The nearest darker sky to Palm Desert
La Quinta, CA, about 8 miles away as the crow flies, measures in the rural band, one step darker than Palm Desert. Actual driving distance will run longer than that straight-line figure.
La Quinta, CA is itself still a measured city, not a designated dark-sky park, this only compares against the 3,206 places this dataset covers.
How Palm Desert compares nationally
Palm Desert, CA has a population of about 53,147, one of 3,206 US cities of 10,000 or more residents in this dataset. Palm Desert places 2,054 of 3,206 cities in this dataset's darkest-to-brightest order, ranked by the method in the methodology guide.