Community Observatory

  What Can You See At The Community Observatory This Weekend Placerville, California 9:00–11:00 PM — Friday, June 27 and Saturday, June 28, 2026 If skies cooperate, the last weekend of June should offer a very nice mix of bright summer showpieces and a Moon that grows noticeably fuller from one night to the next. Both nights should be comfortable for public observing, with mostly clear to sunny conditions during the day leading into clear evening skies. The Moon will become a bigger factor as the weekend goes on. On Friday, June 27 , it will already be quite bright and may begin to wash out some of the fainter Milky Way detail later in the session. By Saturday, June 28 , it will be very near full and will dominate more of the evening sky, making that night especially good for lunar observing rather than hunting faint nebulae and galaxies. That said, the Moon itself should be a beautiful telescopic target, with dramatic contrast along the terminator. Current forecasts su...

    What can you expect to see this weekend at the Community Observatory? The thin crescent moon doesn’t rise until early morning, the weather is great with 0% clouds, and the humidity is low. It should be a good weekend to visit the Community Observatory. The Sun is setting around 8:30 PM so it is dark enough by our 9 PM opening to start seeing things with our telescopes. The highlight of the early glomming is a very impressive conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. Those two objects are the brightest objects behind the Moon in the night sky. A conjunction means that they appear to be quite close to each other. They aren’t actually close but they appear to be since they appear along the same line of site from our point-of-view. The closest approach was on Tuesday of this week when they were only 1.5° apart. Another treat for those of you arriving around 9 PM I that you can see Mercury. Very few people have seen Mercury. It is elusive because its close orbit around the ...

    What can you expect to see this weekend at the Community Observatory? This could be a great opportunity to see the night sky at the Community Observatory. Clear skies with less than 20% cloud cover and a last-quarter moon that doesn’t rise until after midnight portend great viewing. We also have clear skies predicted for our Solar Viewing on Saturday morning. Jupiter and Venus are putting on a show in the western sky, It is called a “conjunction” when two heavenly bodies are close to each other in the sky. June 9th features the two planets appearing at their closest, within about 1.5 degrees. Even though they appear to be close, they just fall within the same line of sight. Venus is about 100 million miles away while Jupiter is six times further. Early arrivers may also be able to see the elusive Mercury. The image today is an “orrery” (pronounced aw·rr·ee) which is a image version of a mechanical model of the Solar System. The planets to the left of the Sun are vi...