As we previously did articles on the 2024 solar eclipse for the several 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 Indiana in regards to light pollution and astronomy.
| Item | How Many |
| Number Of State Parks | 24 |
| Number of Different Bortle Scales | 5 |
| Level 1 Bortle Scale State Parks | 0 |
| Level 2 Bortle Scale State Parks | 0 |
| Level 3 Bortle Scale State Parks | 0 |
| Level 4 Bortle Scale State Parks | 3 |
| Level 5 Bortle Scale State Parks | 13 |
| Level 6 Bortle Scale State Parks | 5 |
| Level 7 Bortle Scale State Parks | 1 |
| Level 8 Bortle Scale State Parks | 2 |
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 |
To learn more about the Bortle Scale, check out this article. The Indiana State Parks official website can be found here.
Hi Mike,
Curious if you could share how you determined the bortle value for each of the Indiana state parks. Looking at ightpollutionmap.info with the default World Atlas 2015 overlay, the vast majority of Indiana state parks are shown as Bortle 4 but I see you only have three parks listed there, with the majority listed as Bortle 5-6. Are the values referenced in your article values for the actual location of the park, or values for the nearest city?
Thanks,
Blake
Hey Blake. Thanks for asking! On the same website that you used, lightpollutionmap.info, there are VIRS overlays for 2016-2023. We utilize that information and other information as well to make a determination. It’s probably worth reviewing the data at regular intervals using the most recent data. But using older data isn’t ideal when there is more recent data