The Observatory

This has been a dream to live under fairly dark skies and to have enough land to construct a observatory in our own backyard. In May of 2003 we purchased a home in Valley Center with 2.8 acres of mostly open land. The elevation is 1850 feet and the top of the ridge is about 2000 foot. Theres a large valley on the other side of this ridge which decends to about the 800 foot level. This creates a light air flow over this ridge which is great to push back the marine layer from the Pacific ocean which is about 30 miles away.

The site for the observatory ended up being place on a small ridge just west of the house. It was chosen because it is not too far from the house, not too unlevel to work with and has a very open sky in all directions. This how the area looked in 2003 and below this is after the brush was completely cleared in August 2009.

The Observatory will go here


	All the images in this site are © Copyright 1999-2012 by Kevin Hearst. Commercial use of these images without the prior written consent or knowledge of the author is strictly prohibited.