Image credit: Kitt Peak National Observatory
The first time I saw Jupiter through a professional telescope at Lowell Observatory, I couldn’t pull myself away from the eyepiece. What I saw was more than a bright dot floating in the darkness. I saw a living world, its striped storm bands clearly visible, and four tiny moons circling it. It wasn’t a photograph or an artist’s rendering. This was Jupiter itself, over 400 million miles away, yet through the eyepiece of that telescope, it was close enough for me to feel like a nearby neighbor.
My moment of awe is a perfect example of why Arizona’s observatories beckon thousands of visitors each year. They are windows to the cosmos, opening the vastness of the universe to the earth-bound.
Arizona’s observatories are perched at high elevations where dark skies and remarkably clear weather for most of the year have earned the state the nickname of The Astronomy State. It is home to some of the world’s most important astronomical research facilities, many of which open their doors to the public. Each location offers its own unique gateway to the stars.
LOWELL OBSERVATORY, Flagstaff
Stroll across the same grounds where Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. Today’s visitors can see the telescope he used to find it, peer through both historic and modern telescopes, and recline in the heated seats of the brand new open-air planetarium. The newly-opened Astronomy Discovery Center invites guests of all ages to enjoy hands-on astronomy, while the new theater is fun for interactive presentations and films. Flagstaff is the world’s first certified Dark Sky Community, and you can still see the Milky Way in parts of the city.
MOUNT LEMMON SKY CENTER, Tucson
As you ascend from the floor of the Sonoran Desert, you pass through every ecological zone that you’d find on a drive from Tucson to Canada, all smashed into a single hour of driving up this one mountain. The evening program begins at sunset, where views of the city lights of Tucson twinkle under the twilight as the stars come out one by one. After dark, the sky is filled with more stars than most people are used to seeing. Guests are treated to close-up views of deep space objects through the largest public telescope in the state.
KITT PEAK NATIONAL OBSERVATORY, Sells
Kitt Peak sits atop one of Arizona’s Sky Islands on land that belongs to the Tohono O’odham people. During some of the public programs, a Tohono O’odham guide may share their nation’s traditional stories about the sky, adding cultural depth to the scientific observations. Kitt Peak offers daytime programs, including tours of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, evening stargazing programs, and overnight programs for those who want a deeper immersion into the night sky.
FRED LAWRENCE WHIPPLE OBSERVATORY, Amado
While tours to the massive 6.5-meter MMT Observatory at the summit of the Santa Rita Mountains are not yet re-opened to the public, guests can tour the VERITAS equipment outside the newly remodeled Visitor Center. This telescope is an array of what looks like giant satellite dishes. But once you climb up to the catwalk in front of one of them, you’ll see that the dish is made of 345 hexagonal-shaped mirrors that are each carefully positioned to capture gamma ray information from space.
MOUNT GRAHAM INTERNATIONAL OBSERVATORY, Safford
Perhaps the most comprehensive experience comes from Mount Graham International Observatory’s tours, which begin at the Visitor Center located on the Discovery Park Campus. Visitors journey up the mountain on seasonal tours to visit three distinct telescopes, including the Large Binocular Telescope. The tour weaves together astronomy with the mountain’s geology and ecology, including the story of the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel.
FIRST SIGHT
Professional astronomers often speak of “first light” when a new telescope first opens its eye to the universe. But for many visitors, these observatories offer something equally valuable: first sight. Whether it’s Saturn’s rings in perfect clarity, a globular cluster spreading its diamonds across the field of view, or the realization that those fuzzy smudges are actually a distant galaxy or nebula, these moments change how we see our place in the cosmos.
The experienced guides of each observatory tour curate an experience based on what’s visible for that night and season. Some nights might feature Jupiter’s cloud bands, others the delicate structure of a nebula, but all offer a chance to look deeper into space than your eyes alone could ever take you.
