Light pollution · Hungary
Light pollution in Budapest
The night sky over Budapest rates an estimated Bortle 9 on the 1–9 scale (inner-city sky), from NASA's satellite map of night lights. Below: what that means for the Milky Way and the stars, and the nearest dark sky with its distance and direction.
- Bortle class
- 9
- inner-city sky
- Faintest star
- 3.9
- magnitude, naked eye
- Sky brightness
- ≈ 17.6
- mag/arcsec², approx.
- Milky Way
- not visible
- Andromeda (M31)
- binoculars only
Black is a pristine sky, white an inner city. Tap any spot on the map for its class and the darkest land within 50, 100 and 200 km: the numbers on this page are that tap on the city centre.
Open the light pollution map on Budapest
What you can see from Budapest
At Bortle 9 (inner-city sky): Only the Moon, the planets and the very brightest stars get through the glow; the Milky Way is out of reach. The faintest stars the naked eye reaches from the centre are around magnitude 3.9, and the sky background is about 17.6 mag/arcsec² (an SQM meter reads ~22 under a pristine sky, under 18 in a city centre).
The Milky Way: not visible from the centre of Budapest, lost in the glow. It takes a sky of Bortle 4 or darker to see it properly.
The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is out of reach for the naked eye here; binoculars still show its core.
Dark sky near Budapest: where to see the stars
The nearest sky of Bortle 4 or darker, where the Milky Way shows overhead, is about 30 km west of the centre (Bortle 4). A properly dark sky, Bortle 3 or darker, starts about 58 km north-east (Bortle 3).
| Within | Darkest land | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 50 km | Bortle 4 | 45 km north-east · map → |
| 100 km | Bortle 3 | 89 km north-east · map → |
| 200 km | Bortle 2 | 121 km north-east · map → |
The darkest spot on land within each distance, and among spots as dark as it the nearest: the same search the map runs when you tap the city.
Can I see the stars tonight from Budapest?
Light pollution is only one of the four things that decide a night: cloud, the moon and how dark the sun lets it get matter as much. The stars page for Budapest scores tonight and the next three nights, in the city and at the darkest spot nearby.
Get told the night the sky near Budapest is clear and dark
The clear dark sky alert is part of LayEarth Pro: tap your spot on the stars map, press "Alert me", and get one push on the night its score reaches 60 or more, with the best hours. 7-day free trial, then 9 USD a month.
The Bortle scale
| Class | Sky | Faintest star | What you see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1 | excellent dark-sky site | 7.8 | The Milky Way is bright enough to cast faint shadows, the zodiacal light and airglow are visible, and thousands of stars reach down to the horizon. |
| Bortle 2 | truly dark sky | 7.3 | The Milky Way is full of detail, faint airglow may show near the horizon, and clouds look like black holes against the stars. |
| Bortle 3 | rural sky | 6.8 | The Milky Way is rich and textured overhead; distant towns are only a faint glow low on the horizon. |
| Bortle 4 | rural/suburban transition | 6.3 | The Milky Way is clearly visible overhead but loses detail towards the horizon, where the light domes of towns rise in several directions. |
| Bortle 5 | suburban sky | 5.8 | The Milky Way is weak and washed out, visible overhead only on the best nights; light domes cover much of the horizon. |
| Bortle 6 | bright suburban sky | 5.3 | The Milky Way is at most a faint trace straight up on the clearest nights; the sky is grey up to 35° above the horizon. |
| Bortle 7 | suburban/urban transition | 4.8 | The Milky Way is invisible; the whole sky has a grey-orange glow and only the main constellations stand out. |
| Bortle 8 | city sky | 4.3 | The sky glows orange or white: the Moon, the planets and a few dozen bright stars, enough to trace Orion or the Plough. |
| Bortle 9 | inner-city sky | 3.8 | Only the Moon, the planets and the very brightest stars get through the glow; the Milky Way is out of reach. |
Questions
- What is the Bortle class of Budapest?
- An estimated Bortle 9 (inner-city sky) at the city centre, from NASA Black Marble 2016 night lights: the light of every lit pixel within 100 km, falling off with distance. Naked-eye limit around magnitude 3.9, sky brightness about 17.6 mag/arcsec².
- Where is the nearest dark sky to Budapest?
- The nearest land of Bortle 4 or darker is about 30 km west of the centre (Bortle 4); Bortle 3 or darker about 58 km north-east. The darkest land within 200 km is Bortle 2, 121 km north-east.
- Can you see the Milky Way from Budapest?
- The Milky Way: not visible from the centre of Budapest, lost in the glow. It takes a sky of Bortle 4 or darker to see it properly.
- Can you see the Andromeda galaxy from Budapest?
- The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is out of reach for the naked eye here; binoculars still show its core.
- How current is this light pollution data?
- The night lights are NASA Black Marble 2016, the latest global cloud-free mosaic on NASA GIBS. Many towns have changed since, often brighter with white LED street lights, a few darker: the class is an estimate from satellite radiance, not a sky meter reading.
Light pollution nearby
Vienna · Zagreb · Belgrade · Prague · Warsaw · Munich · Venice · Sofia
Can I see the stars tonight from Budapest? · Budapest weather now · all cities
How this is estimated
These numbers are the LayEarth light pollution layer's, computed when the page was built with the same code the map runs: NASA Black Marble 2016 night lights (VIIRS, via NASA GIBS, public domain) at ~2 km, every lit pixel within 100 km adding glow that falls off as (distance + 1 km)−2.5 (Walker's law), mapped to a Bortle class calibrated on sites of known darkness. Limiting magnitude is the Bortle chart's column, SQM the band lightpollutionmap.info gives each class. The darkest spots are searched on land (the NOAA GFS wave grid as land mask) every 5 km out to 50 km, every 10 km to 200 km. Not in it: haze, local horizons, airglow, and lights that changed after 2016. The live map answers the same question for any spot.