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I've been to the US once and had the chance to road trip through Utah and Nevada, where pretty much no big cities exist or are far apart. Can confirm that I've never seen anything like that fantastic night sky in Europe.

I like to do astrophotography in my freetime and I can recommend tools like light pollution maps and the Bortle scale to check out your surrounding area.

It gives a good idea where better skies might be not too far away. For where I live in Germany, there are bortle 4 skies (scale goes up to 9, the lower the less pollution).

I can see the Milkyway in the southern sky during summer from the driveway, but as soon as you get to a "bigger" city that starts to become harder/impossible.

I visited LaPalma (Canary Islands) a few years ago and that was one of the best experiences I ever had:

Up at the highest peak (> 2400 m) watching the sun set and having the night take over. Milkyway as clear as you can imagine! LaPalma is doing a lot to keep it that way, and I hope more cities would care for our beautiful nightsky the way they do.

Italy also has great skies, especially the more rural areas, here is one example from 2023:

Exactly, I saw the actual night sky once in my life when traveling and it was breathtaking, I cannot believe how people don't even know what we've given up. I also thought those nat geo / Nasa pictures were computer generated recreations, but you can actually see that with your naked eyes

My wife was a born and raised big city girl. She never knew what a real night sky looked like outside of the 20 or so brightest objects you can see in the city. She was well travelled, but only to other cities. She has never even gone camping.

When we were dating, after discovering she had not seen a real night sky in her life, late one night I took her on a drive out to the outer edge of farm country. Not even close to actual dark sky, but way better than anything she had ever seen. It was a magical moment. She never knew you could see the milky way, let alone Andromeda with your eyes.

Imagine being a young adult woman and only ever having seen a handful of the brightest stars. Some boy you dig, but barely know gets all excited when the conversation turns to astronomy, which you know nothing about and aside from polite conversation with this boy, don't care about at all. He suddenly gets this cheshire cat's grin, whisks you into his car at 11pm on a Friday and drives 2 hours out into the country at 1am, on a whim.

You're tired and nervous. The drive is long enough for various weird scenarios to pop into your head, not all of them good. How well do you know this boy? He stops the car at a dead end dirt road without so much as a streetlight. Just farms and forest in the distance. Its a warm summer night. He turns off the car and gets out. It takes a few seconds for your eyes to adjust to the darkness after the headlights go out. He gets out of the car and opens the door for you. A cool gentle breeze blows on your face and you can hear crickets chirping. He holds both your hands warmly, gives you the biggest smile, looks deep into your eyes in a long silence. Eventually he says "Now look up". You follow his eyes as they turn skyward.

Then you see it all for the first time.

Married now for ~ 20 years, and while I've had more than my fair share of less than charming moments, she still says when I put in the effort, I can be devastatingly romantic.

Lol I grew up in rural areas and remember my mom being excited about the northern lights and watching them from our front porch, wondering what was so special about some lights in the night sky, which was already full of lights.

At least my daughter has been growing up in towns all her life so far and appreciated seeing them this past year, unlike the little shit I was.

When my wife and I went on our honeymoon, we spent a night at sea in what's supposed to be one of the darkest places in the Carribean on the same night there was a shuttle launch. I was so supremely excited to see the true sky. Literally a once in a lifetime experience.

We got hit with a storm. The launch was scrubbed. We spent the night restricted below deck, trying to navigate hallways that almost felt like you could walk on the walls. It was an amazing trip, but I'm still bummed about that night.

I grew up in rural Texas. One of the few joys I had was being able to look up into the sky and see the Milky Way just about every night.

I have never seen it. Now that I think of it I wonder if a few times while roadtripping if I might have had a chance to see it but had not thought to go out at night and try to get a glimpse.

Yeah, I live in the middle of that big bright spot. I've got no idea what the milky way looks like.