Sacramento one of the most light-polluted cities in state. How do we see the stars?

The Sacramento State Planetarium is great  for people with early bedtimes or who don’t want to commit to a long drive. 

Kyle Watters, the director for the planetarium, said the facility gives guests a chance to see the night sky without light pollution or weather woes at any time of the day. 

“If any people are astronomy buffs or amateur astronomers, you know that clouds are the bane of our existence in astronomy,” he said. “And guess what? There’s never any clouds in the planetarium.” 

The planetarium holds several shows throughout the summer, including Backyard Astronomy, which allows guests to see what the Sacramento sky will look like that night, and Kids Day shows for “young budding astronomers.”

“It’s really impressive what we can do in a theater like that,” he added. 

He noted that people should sign up for their email list and follow them on social media to ensure they know when tickets are available because they sell out fast. 

“We have had some shows sell out very fast historically, and part of that is due to the low cost,” he explained. “This is something that is kind of a university priority, making science education available to everyone.”

He noted that all of the astronomy shows are free for kids 12 and under and $5 for adults. Some of the music shows cost $15, but proceeds from all shows go towards funding free field trips to the planetarium from Northern California schools. 

“We have schools come from an hour and a half or two hours away every direction for a field trip,” he added. “We’re only able to do that because we’re able to make some money off of our ticket sales.”

Speaking about light pollution, Watters explained that roughly 5,000 stars are visible to the naked eye in ideal night sky conditions.

“But if you are looking up from downtown Sacramento, you’re lucky if you can see 50 or 100,” Watters added. “Our car headlights, building lights, street lights and city lights, they add a lot of extra light to the sky, and that drowns out the fainter objects and reduces the amount of stuff you can see.”

He said that the Community Observatory in Placerville, however, has significantly better night sky viewing conditions.

“It is very minimal compared to what we have here in Sacramento proper,” he said. “They’ve got a pretty nice night sky already at that point.” 

Community Observatory in Placerville 

Randy Hodges is the chief docent for the Community Observatory in Placerville. He said the observatory is “not like anything else in California” because it’s free and open to the public. 

He noted that many people confuse observatories and planetariums, so he clarified the differences.

“We have large telescopes that we actually look at items in the sky [with],” he explained. “Telescopes that are large enough that we can see galaxies, nebulae, deep sky objects and a lot of exciting things.” 

The observatory is open 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. every Friday and Saturday night as long as weather conditions are good. Hodges noted that they tend to be open 60 to 80 times a year. 

“Last year, we saw almost 13,000 people that came up to visit us,” he said. 

Something Hodges said makes the observatory unique is their sky theater, which he described as an “open-air amphitheater” where people can lie back to look at the sky.

“That holds about 100 people and every night we do a program in there where we use our laser pointers to point out things in the sky and to teach lessons about the sky,” he added.

The open-air amphitheater at the Community Observatory in Placerville.(Courtesy/Community Observatory)

He argued that getting a chance to see the night sky without light pollution gives people a perspective of not only how amazing the universe is, but also how “complex it is and how wonderfully balanced everything is.”

“We talk about Earth being a goldilocks planet meaning that just the right amount of oxygen, just the right type of star and the right distance from the star,” he said. “There’s about 200 things that make Earth a place where we can live. It’s also important to realize how fragile the Earth, how small it is and how we need to take care of it. Astronomy gives you that perspective.”

Hodges said he got into astronomy 50 years ago when, as a 20-year-old, he got his first telescope.

“The first night I saw the Andromeda Galaxy and Saturn, and I was hooked,” he said. 

Now, he and 50 other unpaid volunteers ensure others have an opportunity to see these and other deep sky objects. But while the night sky in Placerville is significantly better than Sacramento’s, he said it’s still not great.

“We are ideal in that we’re a good compromise between being not that far away and pretty dark, but if we were another 50 miles east, it would be much darker,” he said. “But nobody would come.” 

For amateur astronomers looking for darker night skies, he recommended they look into joining the Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society, which has been around since 1945 and is one of the oldest astronomical societies in the country.

Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society

Gergo Baldauf has been into night photography for as long as he can remember. 

“I just really liked what cameras can do at night without realizing that there is a hobby such as astrophotography,” he said. 

Roughly seven years ago, Baldauf took a photo of the night sky and saw something peculiar. 

“I just didn't understand,” he recounted. “Somebody pointed out to me that I accidentally took a photo of the Orion Nebula, and it all went downhill from that.”

Eventually, he got involved with the Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society where he learned more about the hobby and eventually became its president. But Baldauf noted one key difference between his group and something like the community observatory in Placerville.

“The community observatory is set up to receive a very large number of people each night, but nobody is allowed to bring their own equipment,” he explained. “You go there for viewing if you're not a part of the hobby. We're sort of the exact opposite.”

The astronomical society is member focused, meaning the general public is not invited to most of its events.

“You can visit the community observatory for a single night of stargazing and have a wonderful presentation of what’s in the sky,” he added, referring to the community observatory in Placerville. “If you want to take things a step further and purchase your own equipment and need help learning the hobby, that’s what we do.”

This is largely because of how expensive the equipment is. In the past, he said non-members who learned of a viewing event have brought dogs or used headlights, which ruin long exposure photos. 

“We use red lights at night and try to minimize the lights as much as possible to make it easy for everybody to enjoy their observations and keep unwanted lights away from camera equipment,” he said. “People take 10-minute exposures, for example, on a camera, and if you shine light into the telescope, you just cost 10 minutes.”

However, Baldauf said his goal this year is to start hosting public “star parties” for the general public the week after a new moon — member-only star parties are the week of the new moon. 

“That's when I would like to do our public events because a lot of people have never really seen the moon with big optics before,” he said. “It's definitely a wow factor that we really enjoy presenting to people for the first time.” 

He recommended people follow them on social media or check out the event calendar on their website to find any general public viewing events they might hold in the future. 

Gergo Baldauf's kids look through a telescope.(Courtesy/Gergo Baldauf)

And although they are located deep in the Sierra Mountains, Baldauf said light pollution from Sacramento and Lake Tahoe is still impacting their night sky.

“You don't see stars near the horizon anymore at all,” he said. “We still have dark skies, but it's significantly different from what it was 10 to 15 years ago.”

Referring to the Bortle scale, which ranks night skies between one and nine from best to worst viewing conditions, he said a one and two level is “practically inaccessible in California anymore.”

“Those conditions don't exist because even from 200 miles away, another city will create light pollution that just pushes the scale back,” he added.

That's why he's trying to preserve dark sky locations that still exist as opposed to trying to reduce light pollution from cities like Sacramento.

“I don't think you can turn back the clock for the Lake Tahoe region because there is already so much light pollution out there that it's just going to continue getting worse,” he said. “It would be nice saving some of the national parks and making sure that we can still set up protected areas of dark sky sanctuaries for people to enjoy.”

Baldauf noted that he was working with staff from Lassen Volcanic National Park to make it a dark sky sanctuary, but the 2021 Dixie Fire that burned through the park halted that.

“We were teaching the park staff on how to use some of their telescope equipment to set up night sky programs,” he said. “I don’t know if those park staff were able to return since the fires.” 

He hopes to continue this work to ensure people in the region don't lose access to some of the few remaining dark skies relatively accessible to them.

“It's something everybody should be able to experience at some point in their life and it is becoming more and more difficult to get to know that side of our planet and the world we live in,” he said. “We're just losing access to seeing this part of nature.”