Pittsburgh, PA Night Sky Brightness
What the night sky looks like over Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh reads as urban on this dataset's scale. Sky glow overhead most nights. Typically only planets, the Moon, and a handful of the brightest stars are visible. Only 95.1% of the 3,206 cities measured here read darker than Pittsburgh.
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 - the Bortle scale guide covers why.
How far Pittsburgh is from a meaningfully darker sky
Baldwin, PA, about 4 miles away as the crow flies, measures in the suburban edge band, one step darker than Pittsburgh. Actual driving distance will run longer than that straight-line figure.
Baldwin, PA is itself still a measured city, not a designated dark-sky park, this only compares against the 3,206 places this dataset covers.
Pittsburgh against the rest of the dataset
Pittsburgh, PA has a population of about 307,668, one of 3,206 US cities of 10,000 or more residents in this dataset. Among all 3,206 cities here, Pittsburgh ranks 3,033 from darkest to brightest, 1 being the darkest measured, by the sampling the methodology guide documents.