We previously did an article on the 2024 solar eclipse for the US state parks, and figure that there is an amazing opportunity for mapping those state parks to their Bortle Scale values. With the help of https://www.lightpollutionmap.info, we created the following table to provide information about the entire state parks for Oregon in regards to light pollution and astronomy.

Item	How Many	Percent
Number Of State Parks	200
Number of Different Bortle Scales	8
Level 1 Bortle Scale State Parks	7	3.5%
Level 2 Bortle Scale State Parks	27	13.5%
Level 3 Bortle Scale State Parks	50	25%
Level 4 Bortle Scale State Parks	33	16.5%
Level 5 Bortle Scale State Parks	21	10.5%
Level 6 Bortle Scale State Parks	5	2.5%
Level 7 Bortle Scale State Parks	2	1%
Level 8-9 Bortle Scale State Parks	4	2%

Some of the 200 state parks weren’t included because they were trailheads or other options such as waysides that weren’t appropriate to add in for potential astronomy.

Map

Here is a show of the colors of the markers, to know how to read the map.

Color	Bortle Scale
Black	Level 1
Dark Purple	Level 2
Blue	Level 3
Green	Level 4
Yellow	Level 5
Orange	Level 6
Red	Level 7
White	Level 8-9

To learn more about the Bortle Scale, check out this article. The Oregon State Parks official website can be found here. Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and make sure to come back to check for interesting articles like this, which are posted every week.