Bengaluru has overtaken Delhi as India's brightest night sky (65.0 vs 57.5 nW/cm²·sr), and every one of India's classic dark-sky getaways — Manali, Shimla, Jaisalmer, Rishikesh, Ooty, Darjeeling — is measurably losing its darkness.
| # | City | Radiance 2025 | Sky class | Since 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bengaluru | 65.0 | Bortle 9 | -6% |
| 2 | Delhi | 57.5 | Bortle 9 | -3% |
| 3 | Hyderabad | 49.5 | Bortle 8 | -7% |
| 4 | Kolkata | 45.8 | Bortle 8 | +34% |
| 5 | Ahmedabad | 41.9 | Bortle 8 | +99% |
| 6 | Lucknow | 39.9 | Bortle 8 | +18% |
| 7 | Mumbai | 36.5 | Bortle 8 | +48% |
| 8 | Pune | 31.8 | Bortle 8 | +79% |
| 9 | Chennai | 31.7 | Bortle 8 | +61% |
| 10 | Jaipur | 30.5 | Bortle 8 | +48% |
| # | City | Radiance 2025 | Sky class | Since 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manali | 0.35 | Bortle 1 | +136% |
| 2 | Darjeeling | 0.66 | Bortle 4 | +54% |
| 3 | Shimla | 1.61 | Bortle 4 | +165% |
| 4 | Ooty | 1.68 | Bortle 4 | +51% |
| 5 | Leh | 2.16 | Bortle 4 | +546% |
| 6 | Jaisalmer | 2.90 | Bortle 4 | +151% |
| 7 | Rishikesh | 4.14 | Bortle 5 | +118% |
| 8 | Panaji | 7.51 | Bortle 5 | +74% |
| 9 | Madurai | 8.25 | Bortle 5 | +54% |
| 10 | Thiruvananthapuram | 9.35 | Bortle 5 | +145% |
The fastest-growing light pollution in India is not in the metros — their skies are already saturated. It is in the small, beautiful places people escape to precisely because they are dark.
Hanle, 250 km southeast of Leh, became India's first official Dark Sky Reserve in 2022. Astro-tourism boomed; hotels, homestays and streetlights followed — and the sky above the gateway town every stargazer passes through is vanishing at the fastest rate in the country. Dark skies are becoming India's rarest natural resource, consumed by the tourism they attract.
Three cities appear to have improved: Delhi (−3.4%), Bengaluru (−5.9%), Hyderabad (−7.2%). Don't celebrate yet. These are the years of India's mass conversion to LED streetlights, and the VIIRS satellite sensor cannot see blue light — the band where white LEDs emit most strongly. Cities that "darken" in satellite data during LED transitions often got worse for actual skyglow, because blue light scatters more in the atmosphere, not less.
This is precisely why ground measurement matters: satellites see cities from above; only people under the sky can measure what it actually looks like. That ground-truth layer is what SkyQI's citizen-science network provides.
One phone photo → your sky's SQM value and Bortle class, on the map in seconds.
City sky pages Measure on the web Android app iOS app| # | City | 2015 | 2020 | 2025 | Change | Class |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bengaluru | 69.10 | 65.63 | 65.00 | -6% | B9 |
| 2 | Delhi | 59.49 | 47.12 | 57.48 | -3% | B9 |
| 3 | Hyderabad | 53.31 | 42.67 | 49.50 | -7% | B8 |
| 4 | Kolkata | 34.28 | 37.71 | 45.85 | +34% | B8 |
| 5 | Ahmedabad | 21.07 | 26.95 | 41.94 | +99% | B8 |
| 6 | Lucknow | 33.76 | 34.61 | 39.85 | +18% | B8 |
| 7 | Mumbai | 24.61 | 27.05 | 36.54 | +48% | B8 |
| 8 | Pune | 17.77 | 23.19 | 31.79 | +79% | B8 |
| 9 | Chennai | 19.68 | 22.60 | 31.73 | +61% | B8 |
| 10 | Jaipur | 20.62 | 23.00 | 30.54 | +48% | B8 |
| 11 | Indore | 12.07 | 16.74 | 30.02 | +149% | B8 |
| 12 | Prayagraj | 13.31 | 12.05 | 27.08 | +104% | B8 |
| 13 | Vadodara | 13.54 | 16.98 | 25.29 | +87% | B8 |
| 14 | Chandigarh | 14.48 | 15.91 | 24.66 | +70% | B8 |
| 15 | Surat | 12.94 | 16.54 | 23.74 | +83% | B8 |
| 16 | Kanpur | 16.37 | 18.97 | 22.77 | +39% | B8 |
| 17 | Patna | 8.93 | 15.63 | 21.53 | +141% | B8 |
| 18 | Nagpur | 15.13 | 12.45 | 20.16 | +33% | B8 |
| 19 | Bhopal | 11.04 | 12.95 | 20.16 | +82% | B8 |
| 20 | Jodhpur | 15.40 | 16.41 | 19.71 | +28% | B8 |
| 21 | Varanasi | 9.79 | 11.24 | 19.25 | +97% | B8 |
| 22 | Ludhiana | 10.36 | 11.48 | 17.81 | +72% | B8 |
| 23 | Agra | 14.47 | 12.49 | 17.68 | +22% | B8 |
| 24 | Bhubaneswar | 9.53 | 9.22 | 17.66 | +85% | B8 |
| 25 | Raipur | 10.01 | 11.32 | 17.24 | +72% | B8 |
| 26 | Visakhapatnam | 11.66 | 11.71 | 15.54 | +33% | B8 |
| 27 | Ranchi | 9.62 | 11.19 | 15.13 | +57% | B8 |
| 28 | Nashik | 9.52 | 10.39 | 14.20 | +49% | B8 |
| 29 | Coimbatore | 8.12 | 9.99 | 13.48 | +66% | B8 |
| 30 | Gwalior | 8.26 | 10.26 | 13.34 | +62% | B8 |
| 31 | Amritsar | 7.94 | 9.84 | 13.34 | +68% | B8 |
| 32 | Dehradun | 6.71 | 7.73 | 13.03 | +94% | B8 |
| 33 | Mysuru | 10.45 | 12.09 | 12.34 | +18% | B8 |
| 34 | Guwahati | 4.79 | 4.96 | 12.16 | +154% | B8 |
| 35 | Jabalpur | 7.48 | 8.92 | 11.78 | +57% | B7 |
| 36 | Kochi | 5.60 | 6.72 | 11.31 | +102% | B7 |
| 37 | Kota | 8.50 | 7.39 | 11.02 | +30% | B7 |
| 38 | Udaipur | 5.91 | 6.26 | 9.98 | +69% | B5 |
| 39 | Vijayawada | 5.26 | 6.48 | 9.74 | +85% | B5 |
| 40 | Srinagar | 5.24 | 6.42 | 9.67 | +85% | B5 |
| 41 | Thiruvananthapuram | 3.81 | 5.81 | 9.35 | +145% | B5 |
| 42 | Madurai | 5.36 | 5.59 | 8.25 | +54% | B5 |
| 43 | Panaji | 4.33 | 4.57 | 7.51 | +74% | B5 |
| 44 | Rishikesh | 1.90 | 2.23 | 4.14 | +118% | B5 |
| 45 | Jaisalmer | 1.16 | 1.61 | 2.90 | +151% | B4 |
| 46 | Leh | 0.33 | 0.69 | 2.16 | +546% | B4 |
| 47 | Ooty | 1.11 | 0.82 | 1.68 | +51% | B4 |
| 48 | Shimla | 0.61 | 0.81 | 1.61 | +165% | B4 |
| 49 | Darjeeling | 0.43 | 0.26 | 0.66 | +54% | B4 |
| 50 | Manali | 0.15 | 0.11 | 0.35 | +136% | B1 |
Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A4 Collection 2 annual composites (Suomi-NPP; Román et al. 2018, Remote Sens. Environ. 210), years 2015, 2020, 2025 — the latest annual available. Measure: AllAngle_Composite_Snow_Free radiance at native 15-arcsec (~500 m) resolution, averaged over a ±0.1° box (~22×22 km) on each city centre. Sky classes derive from the same radiance→SQM→Bortle calibration used on SkyQI's live map. Limitations: VIIRS is blind to blue light (see "The metro illusion"); satellite radiance measures upward emission, which correlates with but understates observed skyglow; city-box averages smooth bright cores and dark outskirts.