· Ines Marchetti
What Bortle 1 actually means
Every lodge within a thousand kilometres claims a dark sky. Almost none of them have measured it, and the number is easy to take.
Sky brightness is measured in magnitudes per square arcsecond. A suburban garden reads around 18.5. A good rural site reads 21.2. We read 21.9, which is within instrument error of the darkest sky anyone has recorded anywhere.
The difference between 21.2 and 21.9 does not sound like much because the scale is logarithmic and unhelpful. In practice it is the difference between knowing where the Milky Way is and being unable to identify constellations because there are too many stars in the way.
A meter costs about two hundred dollars. If somewhere claims a dark sky and cannot give you a number, they have not spent it.