Welcome

Join us for the 2020

Texas Star Party

May 17-24 near Fort Davis, Texas

The 42nd Annual Texas Star Party will be hosted on the magnificent Prude Ranch, a 3500 acre mile-high ranch located six miles northwest of Fort Davis on Highway 118… 12 miles on the same road from McDonald Observatory…

Darkest Skies!

All over America, the search for dark skies is becoming a subject of great interest and concern for amateur astronomers. In many places when amateurs get together to observe the stars, they compare their skies to those they once saw on a remote Texas ranch … Little wonder! The skies in the Davis Mountains of West Texas are among the darkest found anywhere in North America.

Where else, after all, could one find so magnificent a view of Omega Centauri? High in the south and suspended against a sky that is the color of ink, the cluster is so spectacular through your eyepiece, you almost think you can reach out and touch it!

Where else does the Sagittarius Milky Way rise over the mountains with so vivid a presence that you might mistake it for an ominous storm cloud?

And what more natural setting could welcome amateurs than a frontier so remote and beckoning that Leslie Peltier himself once referred to it as “paradise?”

It has to be Texas! The perfect place for the perfect star party … a huge gathering of more than 500 of the most serious astrophotographers and observers in the United States and beyond … the culmination of an odyssey that is worthy of all the dedication and stamina it takes to get here and to return – year, after year, after year!

A Great Vacation!

Serious amateur astronomers have come to appreciate the “observer’s environment” on the mile-high Prude Ranch, where bothersome lights and traffic are strictly controlled to reduce interference to photographers and observers. And during the daytime, there are many activities to keep you busy: