There are only 23 dark sky sanctuaries in the world, and Michigan's Beaver Island is home to one of them. The island is located 2 miles off the shore of Charlevoix in Lake Michigan. The official name is the Beaver Island State Wildlife Research Area International Dark Sky Sanctuary. Dark sky sanctuaries differ from dark sky parks. Sanctuaries are the darkest skies on the nine level Bortle scale coming in at Class 1, with near zero light pollution. In Bortle 1 night skies you can view the Milky W

What is a The Bortle scale? The Bortle scale (created by astronomer John E. Bortle in 2001) is a simple 1-9 system that measures how dark (or light-polluted) your night sky really is. Class 1 = the purest, darkest skies on Earth; Class 9 = bright inner-city glow where only a handful of stars fight through. Most of us live in Bortle 4-8: the Milky Way is faint or washed out, faint deep-sky objects vanish, and the sky has an orange/ gray haze from streetlights. But Bortle Class 1? That's next leve