Lazar Observatory

The Lazar Observatory is located in the San Carlos hills above Stanford University just south of San Francisco. Our site often peeks above the inversion layer of San Francisco Bay into relatively dark skies.

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I've tried to do something different in these pages. Rather than offer a dry list of images with Messier numbers, I've attempted to tell something about each image and object that you might find interesting - and maybe not find elsewhere. I hope you enjoy.

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And do come back every now and then to follow our ongoing quest to find God through science and reason. It will be a fun ride, and I hope you can join us in expanding our minds.

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​In the meantime, for fellow astronomers we must geek out as follows: The telescope is a CGE-1100 (a C-11) working with two SBIG cameras: an ST-4000XCM large-format color, and an STT-8300M monochrome with Astrodon LRGB and 3 nm HA, SII, and OIII narrowband filters. I'll often combine the color data from the ST4K with an HA layer from the STT for greater detail.

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​Many of the images here were taken through an earlier ST-2000XCM color camera. Two AO-8 adaptive optics units keep everything straight, at least until the cat sneezes and the deck shakes.

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An ancient Meade LX-2080 pops up occasionally during the day for Solar work, mainly because I have a great solar filter for it.

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If you like what you see and read, please get in touch.