Shasta Lake, CA's night sky, measured from orbit

Shasta Lake reads as suburban edge on this dataset's scale. A noticeable glow near the horizon. Brighter stars and constellations are easy to pick out; the Milky Way is washed out. Only 16.9% of the 3,206 cities measured here read darker than Shasta Lake.

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

The nearest darker sky to Shasta Lake

Arcata, CA, about 90 miles away as the crow flies, measures in the rural band, one step darker than Shasta Lake. Actual driving distance will run longer than that straight-line figure.

Arcata, 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 Shasta Lake compares nationally

Shasta Lake, CA has a population of about 10,244, one of 3,206 US cities of 10,000 or more residents in this dataset. Shasta Lake places 541 of 3,206 cities in this dataset's darkest-to-brightest order.