Getting here
Turn off Route 21 at the Larkspur cattle grid and climb the switchbacks — forty minutes of maintained gravel, fine for any car in dry weather. Arrive before sunset. Past the grid, headlights off: parking lamps only, and we mean it.
38.5104° N · 113.0892° W · 3,048 m
Every star above this ridge, plotted as it stands tonight.
The chart beside these words is not an illustration. It is the sky over Larkspur Ridge right now — 632 catalogued stars in their true positions, turning at sidereal rate. Rest your cursor on the sky and the constellations answer.
- Local sidereal time
- --:--:--
- Moon
- --
- Sky quality
- 21.9 mag/arcsec²
Chart runs at 60× — one hour of sky each minute · hover a constellation
The evening program
We do not run on a wall clock. We run on the Sun's altitude.
Every session below is anchored to a solar event — sunset, the three twilights, astronomical dawn — so the times shift a little every night. These are tonight's, computed for this ridge, exact to the minute.
Tonight's targets
Six objects worth the cold.
Transit is the minute an object crosses our meridian — its highest, steadiest point. These transits are computed live for tonight. Planets change too quickly to promise here; the current lineup is chalked at the dome door.
| Object | What it is | Constellation | Transits | Peak altitude | Instrument |
|---|
Visiting the ridge
Forty minutes of gravel, then the whole galaxy.
What to bring
A down jacket, even in July — the ridge drops below 8 °C most nights. A red torch, or buy one of ours at the dome. A thermos. No white light of any kind after nautical dusk; one phone screen undoes thirty minutes of dark adaptation for everyone around you.
The weather call
We observe every clear night, April through October. At 16:00 we make the call for the evening and post it on the status line. Clouded out? Your booking rolls to any night this season, no questions.