GoKawiilRockwood, Texas is home to a unique business, Starfront Observatories. Owner/operator Bray Falls hosts hundreds of other people’s telescopes in perfect conditions — ultra-dark skies (Class 1 on the Bortle scale), clear weather, and fast internet — so astrophotographers from around the world can run their scopes and make observations completely from their computers.
Out in the middle of nowhere Texas, a young astrophotographer is running one of the largest telescope ranches on Earth. Stargazers from around the world ship their gear to Bray Falls, who tends 550 telescopes (and counting) on 40 acres outside Brady, the geographic heart of Texas. Customers control the scopes from a laptop anywhere on the planet for as little as 99 dollars a month. We dropped by Starfront Observatories on a perfect dark sky night to see how the operation actually works.
I fisrt learned about telescope ranching late last year from astrophotographer Ian Lauer; he’s got a good video about Starfront Observatories as well:
The imagery produced by the telescopes on this ranch is impressive. Here’s one of Falls’ own images, a nebula he discovered called The Crown of Thorns Nebula.