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Edit: Looks like these are the criteria the IDA use. https://www.darksky.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IDSP-Guid...
In case you're interested what a dark sky town ordinance looks like for a small town that has the designation near where I live, see here[1].
[0] https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/finder/ [1] https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/torreyut/latest/torrey...
Are these due to oil platforms?
I find it hard to believe that the light pollution at the head of the Grand Banks, almost 200km off shore, is equivalent to the the metro area of St. John's, nearby.
Isn't Light Pollution directly proportional to population density?
Every time I am on a motorway in Belgium I wonder why they have such a huge amount of streetlights on highways. Maybe because it doesn't matter anymore in terms of light pollution? :D
At first, it was intended to basically burn the excess electricity produced at night by the first generation of nuclear power plants in Belgium, at a time when it was difficult to reduce their power output on demand.
From then on, because highways were always lightened up it was unnecessary to use reflective paint and signage on the highways.
And today, we're left with signage and paint that are difficult to read at night unless the highways are lined with streetlights, which makes streetlights necessary even though the power plants have been able to adapt to load for a long time now. You can really notice it on the dark sections that do exist, signage is actually difficult to see when in most other countries reflective signage is almost easier to see at night than by day.
Now the streetlights are being slowly turned off, some are being replaced with LEDs, and some of the signage is being updated to reflective, but I don't know if there's any official roadmap to eventually arrive to dark highways with reflective signage.
I was looking at North America as a whole, and noticed a very bright spot in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. It's almost one of the biggest spots. Wikipedia tells me it has a population of basically 2000 people. Why is it so light?
Oil industry. Same reason western North Dakota looks like a major metropolitan area.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a...
It's not like nothing can be done about light pollution. For example Germany has a law about light pollution, and it shows on this map. It less polluted than its neighbours, although it has higher population density and urbanization level.