Stargazing Tour Information
Your 1½-2 hour guided stargazing tour begins just after sunset. Hosted by an experienced astronomer, the informative and educational tour is presented in two parts. First, we’ll use a high-powered green laser to point out planets, constellations, satellites and other interesting objects that are visible to the naked eye. Then, you'll take a closer look through several large telescopes. Depending upon the astronomical calendar, you'll have a chance to view the Moon and its craters, lava flows and valleys, the cloud bands and moons of Jupiter, Saturn and its rings, galaxies, double stars, star clusters and nebulae. We match celestial objects to the proper telescope and magnification for optimum viewing and with several telescopes available, you can stargaze at your own pace.
We are open for star tours throughout the year on days when the light of the Moon does not adversely affect stargazing. Visit our Events Calendar for the optimum stargazing dates. Start times of the stargazing tour will vary, based on the start of darkness.
Shown below are examples of the objects you typically see during our stargazing tour. Make your Reservation today for a truly unforgettable experience.
Solar System Objects -- Saturn and Jupiter are our main stargazing targets. These giants are big and bright, and in the telescope reveal the colored bands of their different atmospheric gases. Saturn is always an exciting target because of its rings and Jupiter showcases its moons and occasionally the shadow of a moon as it crosses the face of the planet. The Moon, when less than 50% illuminated, is another excellent stargazing target. Through the telescope we see details of impacts, canyons, ridges and lava flows. The remaining outer planets, Mars, Uranus and Neptune, all show up as large "colored stars", even under high magnification.
Double Stars -- More than half the stars we see in the night sky are not a single point of light, but are instead a double or multiple star system. These star systems come in different colors and different sizes, with varying distances between the stars. When viewed at higher magnifications in a telescope, it is easy to see why they are a stargazing favorite.
Star systems come in many different configurations -- a small star orbiting a giant sun; two stars of equal size in orbit around a common point; two stars orbiting each other while in orbit around a third star. Systems of two or more stars are referred to as a double stars or binary stars. In the night sky we also see optical doubles, which are two unrelated stars that just happen to lie along the same line of sight from Earth.
Globular Clusters -- Globular clusters are compact, nearly spherical groups of hundreds of thousands to one million stars. The brightness and distinctive appearance of globulars make them an easy target for any size telescope. Through larger telescopes, the bright white star background dotted with red and blue supergiant stars, is an awesome sight.
Most globular clusters are found in the galactic halo, a roughly spherical area of space toward the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. These clusters are concentrated above and below the thin disk of the our Galaxy that contains our solar system, most stars and the younger open clusters. Recent studies have shown that the stars in globular clusters are among the oldest stars in the Galaxy, with ages greater than 10 billion years.
Open Clusters -- Unlike globular clusters, open clusters are physically related groups of stars that contain only hundreds of stars. The most well known open clusters are The Pleiades (M45) and the Beehive Cluster (M44). The young, bright supergiant stars that dot an open cluster are a spectactular sight in a widefield telescope.
Open clusters are usually found in the plane of the galaxy and are believed to originate from the large star-forming gas and dust clouds in the Milky Way. In clusters with bright diffuse nebulae, star formation is still taking place. The most massive stars in very young clusters are in the range of 80-100 solar masses.
Diffuse Nebulae -- Most nebulae can be described as diffuse, which means they have no well-defined boundaries. These nebulae are interstellar clouds of dust and gas, and are often star-forming regions of space. Diffuse nebulae are divided into emission and reflection, a categorization that depends on how we see the light. There are also dark nebulae which are dust clouds in front of stars or emission nebulae.
Planetary Nebulae -- When a star like our Sun has exhausted its hydrogen fuel, the nuclear reactions in the core come to an end while helium burning goes on in the outer shell. This process causes growing instability, which ends in the ejection of a significant part of the star's mass in an expanding shell. The stellar core remains as an extremely hot, small central star. William Herschel coined the term "Planetary Nebula" because he found them to resemble the planet Uranus, which he had recently discovered.
Galaxies -- Galaxies are large stellar systems containing several million to a few trillion stars and ranging in size from several thousand to a few million light years in diameter. In addition to stars, they typically contain various types of star clusters, nebulae, interstellar dust and black holes. There are various classifications of galaxies including spiral, lenticular, elliptical and irregular.
We live in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a large spiral galaxy containing 200-400 billion stars and approximately 100,000 light years in diameter. The cloudy swath of stars we see in the night sky, called the Milky Way, are the spiral arms of our galaxy. The nearest dwarf galaxy is the Canis Major Dwarf at 25,000 light years, while the nearest large neighbor is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), also a spiral, at about 2.2 million light years.
Constellations & Asterisms -- An asterism is a group of stars that appears to form a pattern in the sky and is not an official constellation. Some large and well known asterisms include The Great Square of Pegasus, The Big Dipper (the brightest stars in Ursa Major) and The Teapot (a portion of Sagittarius). Telescopic asterisms include The Coathanger and Kemble's Cascade (which appears like a multicolored toothpick).
In everyday usage, a constellation is also an asterism, with well known star patterns such as Orion (The Hunter) and Leo (The Lion). In astronomy terms however, a constellation is an area of the sky with exact boundaries. The International Astronomical Union divides the sky into 88 official constellations.
Satellites -- With hundreds of man-made satellites now orbiting above the earth, there is a whole new category of objects to watch. Sunlight reflecting off the satellite or its solar panels creates a "moving star." To find these wanderers, scan the sky during twilight; roughly 45 to 90 minutes after sunset or before sunrise. The International Space Station and the space shuttle (when in orbit) are usually the brightest objects to track and can create a very exciting pairing when the shuttle is close to the ISS. The brightest objects are the Iridium satellites. Their highly reflective solar panels can produce a dazzling glint of sunlight that is several times the brightness of Venus. These events are call "Iridium Flares."