Cloudcroft Observatory

High in New Mexico's Lincoln National Forest, about 23 km northeast of Alamogordo, Cloudcroft Observatory (observatory code V29) has watched the sky for over sixty years under three different owners.

About Cloudcroft Observatory

Sitting at an elevation of 2,751 metres, the observatory is now owned by the Tzec Maun Foundation, a private astronomical organisation, but its history reaches back much further and through some very different missions.

History

Built in 1962 as the Cloudcroft Electro-Optical Research Facility, the site was owned by the U.S. Air Force until 1982 and was first operated by the Air Force Avionics Laboratory. Its original purpose was to help develop new electronic-imaging techniques for detecting satellites, intended to replace the photographic Baker-Nunn cameras used by Project Space Track. From 1995 to 2002, the facility took on a new role as the NASA Orbital Debris Observatory, hosting two NASA-funded telescopes dedicated to tracking debris in Earth orbit.

Location & getting there

Cloudcroft Observatory sits in the high forested terrain of the Lincoln National Forest in southern New Mexico, close to the mountain village of Cloudcroft and roughly 23 km from Alamogordo. Its elevation of 2,751 metres gives it notably dark, clear skies compared with lower-altitude sites.

See your named star from here

A star named through Star Register comes with exact right ascension and declination coordinates. High-altitude sites like Cloudcroft Observatory offer especially clear conditions for pointing a telescope at those coordinates and finding your named star. Search the star catalogue to look one up.