The BrightSkies Observatory is a remotely controlled observatory in upper northwest Washington DC, 3.29 miles north of the US Naval Observatory. Located in a tree-infested, light-polluted neighborhood at a low elevation, it sees about 45% of the sky. At one o'clock a.m. it's often bright enough to read a newspaper "under the stars."

On the other hand, and on the "brighter" side, a 30-second exposure with an unfiltered, cooled CCD camera reaches 17th magnitude!

On this site, you can see some of the interesting pictures and other research results obtained at BrightSkies.

This summer, BrightSkies Observatory and its family are moving to a dark sky site in upstate New York.