Best Observatory Sunnyvale Near Me

4worldlovers:
Immerse yourself in the stars! Explore the universe at the De Anza College Planetarium!



Thanks to the FHDA Foundation for captioning on our live event above.

Gayle Tanaka's "Blue Print" series charts her grandparents' emigration from Japan to California, and their later experiences as farmers in Watsonville, shopkeepers in San Francisco and wartime internees in Wyoming and Arizona. The series maps family constellations of immigration, incarceration and assimilation.

"I have long been drawn to astronomical and astrological charts and maps," says Tanaka. "As a child, I loved to find the constellations in the sky. We are all actually a part of at least one fundamental personal constellation, our family. My grandparents and parents, beneath the ancient constellations, acted out their lives, creating myths for me. But unlike the ancient constellations, my position and meaning is not yet fixed. Against the backdrop of the stars, I enact my own becoming."

Come to a Planetarium show and see these works in person.

The De Anza College Planetarium is one of the largest school planetariums west of the Rockies. Join us at this unique community resource for:

See more of our campus video tour on the Video Tour webpage.

We host hundreds of field trips every year from schools all over the Bay Area and beyond. Each program is tailored to NGSS standards and hosted live by the Planetarium staff. Audience questions are always welcome during these presentations.

Field trip shows are available for booking Monday–Friday from September - June. This school year field trips will be held in-person. Programs run an hour and 10 minutes for in-person shows. Visit the Field Trips webpage for more details.

Astronomy shows are offered to the public on most Saturdays from October through May. Each presentation includes a featured fulldome show, plus a live tour of the night sky and space, conducted by our trained presenters. Audience questions are always welcome during these presentations.

Our rotating schedule features different shows each week—and you can learn about a different set of constellations during each season of the year. Check our calendar for show titles and admission prices.

Immerse yourself in vibrant images and music! Our cutting-edge Laser Fantasy system uses sophisticated software and multiple projectors to create dazzling aerial beams and captivating, colorful laser graphics on the interior of our 50-foot dome.

Each show is built around the music of a favorite artist or genre—from Pink Floyd to Michael Jackson, EDM and more! Laser shows are live events, conducted by our professional laser operators, which means each night’s performance is unique.

The Planetarium is located on the De Anza College campus, behind the Science Center building near parking Lot E.

We recommend parking in Lot E for weekend shows. Please allow time to park and purchase a parking permit before the show begins.

To book a field trip or a special event, please contact the Planetarium Office between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Tuesday–Friday. Planetarium shows are offered to the public most Saturdays, October–May, between 2 p.m. and 9 p.m.

4worldlovers:
The Stanford Astronomy Program, through the department of Physics, administers a small teaching observatory for the education and research of its students and faculty. The Student Observatory is located in the hills above the Stanford golf course. While not open to the public on a regular basis, the facility is visible from Junipero Serra and I-280 as the brown cantilevered building with a silver dome to the north of the Dish, the Stanford/SRI 45' radio telescope.

Observational courses are taught during the Spring, Summer and Fall. Physics 50 is primarily for non-science undergraduates interested in the basic techniques of small telescope observations, presented at a non-technical level. In Physics 100, students with a more technical background (e.g. a full year of college physics) can pursue more sophisticated projects, with an increased emphasis on quantitative measurement and spectroscopy. Physics 301 allows graduate students to gain experience with some basic observational techniques; the course is often project based, focused on construction and testing of a piece of observing equipment. In addition, seminars, such as Phy 81, are taught using the observational facilities and students may pursue honors research at the observatory. A number of courses also schedule viewing nights at the facility, associated with class work treating astrophysics.

The observatory is not set up for public viewing. Foothill college in Los Altos Hills, just south of Stanford has a regular schedule of public viewing.

Stanford students interested in astronomy and telescopes may also contact the Stanford Astronomical Society.

In the early 1970's, a group of physics/engineering freshmen with a strong interest in astronomy were having a dormitory dinner with their advisor Professor Walter Meyerhof, chair of physics at the time, and were discussing the limited astronomy offerings on campus. According to Nick Suntzeff, "Somehow the topic of an observatory came up. We naively sketched out what it would take to build a small observatory. Dr. Meyerhof told us something like 'Well, why don't you try to build it!'" The resulting project occupied a substantial fraction of the next four years for student leaders Michael Kast and Nick Suntzeff. Many students and faculty contributed: architecture student Kenneth Kornberg did the basic design and Greg Howell led much of the major construction. Physics students Sally Ride and Doane Farmer also spent appreciable time on the project. Some of the undergraduates received academic credit for the project from the SPIRE program.

Walter Meyerhof remained faculty advisor for the effort. Financial assistance was contributed by the President's office, the Departments of Physics and Mechanical Engineering, Bechtel Corporation and the NSF. However, the real hallmark of the project was the students' efforts to acquire donated or scrap equipment and materials when the resources were limited. For example the dome was a discard from Leuschner Observatory, apparently built in 1905! The Boller&Chivens mount (one of the earliest B&C mounts) came from North American Rockwell and was originally used for missile tracking. The pier tube was a scrap wind tunnel from an engineering junk-heap.

Construction was an education and an adventure. According to Suntzeff, 'innovative' solutions had to be found for many financial and engineering challenges. "The dome was way too big to take on the freeway, but we crossed our fingers and the CHP never caught us.'' Also, "I remember one of the junior faculty with a pencil and paper trying to figure out a dual 3-way light switch from first principles.'' Greg Howell was particularly adept at making do: "To erect the pier which was about 25 feet tall, he only had a crane which was about 25 feet tall. He jacked up the front end of the crane, started lifting the pier upright, and somewhere near vertical, he jerked the crane up while jumping out of the crane and ran for safety. The pier magically righted itself. He told me that he had done this before.''

This effort resulted in the present observatory, which contains a main building with lab space, a teaching room with a small library, a washroom and two small darkrooms. Outside stairs lead to a separate observatory floor, ~35 feet above ground level, with an observing room covered by a 15' dome and a storage/work annex.

The original telescope was a commercial 16" Cassegrain, but this suffered from poor optics, and was replaced with an early model C-14 Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain. A small 8" S-C and an 8" Schmidt camera were co-mounted for a number of years.