Rifle, CO's night sky, measured from orbit

Rifle's sky measures suburban edge here. A noticeable glow near the horizon. Brighter stars and constellations are easy to pick out; the Milky Way is washed out. That's brighter than 13.1% of the 3,206 US cities in this dataset.

Note the source: a satellite reading of upward light, not a visual Bortle scale reading. The two measure related but different things.

How far Rifle is from a meaningfully darker sky

23 miles from Rifle, straight-line, sits Glenwood Springs, CO, the nearest city here with a darker sky than Rifle's own suburban edge band.

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

How Rifle compares nationally

Rifle, CO has a population of about 10,663, one of 3,206 US cities of 10,000 or more residents in this dataset. Rifle places 418 of 3,206 cities in this dataset's darkest-to-brightest order.