Los Alamos County plans public stargazing night at Overlook Park
White Rock's Dark Night turned Overlook Park into a free public observatory, with field lights off and views from the moon to galaxies.
Overlook Park in White Rock became a free public observing site Saturday night as Los Alamos County and the Pajarito Astronomers Club hosted Dark Night under darker skies. The session ran from 7:30 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. at Dara Jones Soccer Field, with the county turning off the athletic field lights for telescope viewing. Families and casual skywatchers could move between four to six telescopes and a constellation tour while the night sky opened up overhead.
County materials say the program runs from March through November, usually on a Saturday evening near a new moon, and weather permitting, starts at sunset and continues until just before midnight. A typical night draws 15 to 50 people and offers views of planets, the moon, galaxies, double stars, gaseous nebulae, open clusters and globular clusters. That mix makes the event as much a community outing as an astronomy session, with the county’s darkened park serving as the setup for free public viewing.
The county and the Pajarito Astronomers Club began hosting monthly Dark Nights in March 2025, and the March 21 season opener in 2026 drew roughly 30 volunteer and professional astronomers to Overlook Park. That turnout showed how the program works on the ground, with local volunteers setting up instruments and guiding visitors through the sky rather than staging a formal festival.
County leaders have tied the observing nights to a broader dark-sky effort. In an International Dark Sky Week proclamation, Heidi Morris accepted the county’s recognition on behalf of the Pajarito Astronomers, and the county said Los Alamos is home to major scientific facilities and to dozens of nocturnal wildlife species on the Pajarito Plateau. The proclamation also highlighted the county’s unusual position: a place where science, outdoor recreation and night-sky access still overlap.
The same proclamation pointed to Valles Caldera National Preserve as an International Dark Sky Park and Bandelier National Monument as a site seeking that recognition. For White Rock, preserving darker skies keeps a public observing night like this possible, and it protects one of the county’s most distinctive low-cost community offerings for future seasons.
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