Stennis Space Center Magnetic Observatory

Near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, inside NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center, a quiet geomagnetic station keeps continuous watch over Earth's magnetic field rather than the night sky.

About Stennis Space Center Magnetic Observatory

The Stennis Space Center Magnetic Observatory — formerly known as the Bay St. Louis observatory — is a geomagnetic monitoring station run in partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. It forms part of the USGS Geomagnetism Program, which tracks variations in Earth's magnetic field across the country.

History

The observatory's current arrangement dates to a memorandum of agreement signed in 2002 between the USGS and NASA's Stennis Space Center, formalising the site as a long-term magnetic monitoring station on federal land near Bay St. Louis.

Location & getting there

The station sits within the grounds of the John C. Stennis Space Center on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, near Bay St. Louis. As part of an active NASA facility, the site itself is not generally open for casual drop-in visits.

Visiting Stennis Space Center Magnetic Observatory

Because this is a working scientific installation on NASA property rather than a public stargazing site, there is no routine public access to the observatory building itself. Anyone hoping to visit the wider Stennis Space Center should check NASA's official visitor information before planning a trip.

See your named star from here

This particular observatory studies Earth's magnetism rather than the stars overhead, so it isn't a place to book a telescope session. But the same idea of precise coordinates applies to a star named through Star Register — its right ascension and declination can be looked up and found in the sky from any reasonably dark spot along the Gulf Coast. Browse the star catalogue to find yours.