Experts Agree — Stargazing at Lake Tahoe Unlike Any Other Location in the World
It’s no secret the lack of light pollution in the Tahoe Sierra makes it ideal for stargazing. It’s also a quiet, peaceful environment to connect with nature, whether you’re on a quiet sandy beach watching the light reflect off the lake or on top of a mountain looking up at the vast sky.
Many people come to Tahoe to go hiking, boating and mountain biking during the day, but there are adventure companies and astronomers who offer plenty of natural entertainment, too.
At Northstar California, Tahoe Star Tours (tahoestartours.com) Owner and Lead Astronomer Tony Berenden gives tours of the sky on Thursday and Saturday evenings, June-September, at the Dark Skies Cosmoarium.
Located in the Castle Peak parking lot at 6,400 feet, stargazers have the chance to look through high tech Celestron telescopes at constellations, planets and galaxies that are literally in another world.
“The lake is an awesome place to go see the stars,” Berenden says. “(Living up here) it’s so easy, but a lot of people who visit from Chicago, the Bay Area … major cities with a lot of light pollution don’t ever get to look up and see the stars. The neat thing about doing star shows outside is looking through these high-definition telescopes. You can get a great look at the moon and planets, see the details. You can look at deep space, into other galaxies, look at crispy spiral stars that are millions of light years away.
“People think there’s a sticker on the lens because the images are so vivid. You can see craters, mountains, shadows.”
He says one group came on a Tahoe Star Tour from South Korea and one person was so captivated by what he saw through the lens that he started crying.
“There’s a lot of light pollution (in Seoul) and in places like San Francisco,” Berenden says. “In San Francisco, you see a handful of stars, but up here you see close to a thousand, and counting the Milky Way, it’s more than that.”
“There’s not a lot of light pollution out here because we’re not near any major cities, so we can see a lot more stars here. Most of the light pollution (in Tahoe) is coming from South Lake and even that’s not that bad compared to Sacramento or the Bay Area,” Tranberg adds. “The best part about going out at night is that no one else is out there — there are no boats flying by you, it’s really peaceful.”
