Yes, Chamberlin Observatory is a small but very popular venue, and our Astronomy Nights are often reserved over six months to ONE YEAR in advance. On the reservations page, if you navigate forward month-by-month, you will eventually find dates that are highlighted in green, and those dates are available.
Alternatively, we invite you to attend one (or all!) of our free Open House events, which we hold once each month on a Saturday evening. You can find those listed on our calendar HERE.
At this time, we do not offer waiting lists. People rarely cancel, and a waiting list would be hundreds of people long. We recommend you keep checking back for a last-minute opening on the date(s) you are interested in.
Alternatively, we invite you to attend one (or all!) of our free Open House events, which we hold once each month on a Saturday evening. You can find those listed on our calendar HERE.
DAS has a private Bortle 2 dark sky site reserved for our members in Deer Trail, CO . You can learn more about it HERE.
Other Colorado favorites include Pawnee National Grassland, Dinosaur National Monument, Estes Park, Upper Beaver Meadows in Rocky Mountain National Park, Echo Lake Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Kaufman Ridge North, Westcliff, and Crestone.
Check out this light pollution map to plan your next trip, or browse this list of Colorado dark sky parks!
We do have a private classifieds section for our members HERE. If you’re not a member, we’d love to have you JOIN US!
Of course, we always accept donations. DAS donations are either loaned to members, given to schools/charities, or sold at auction to raise money for our organization.
Finally, you can try online marketplaces like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist. You could also bring it to your local telescope retailer and put it on consignment or sell it to them outright. There are some good online astronomical forums like Cloudy Nights.
We can usually arrange a tour for your class during school hours. To better schedule you, please email ChamberlinRequests@denverastro.org with the following details:
• What day of the week and time of day do you have in mind?
• How long would you want to spend inside the building?
• How many students will you have in attendance?
For safety reasons, we would like at least one adult present for every five students. We may need to split the group into two segments because our occupancy limit in the dome is 24 people. However, we can easily manage that by swapping out groups for the main and upper floor tours.