Winer Observatory

Winer Observatory is a private, non-profit observatory near Sonoita, Arizona, that has quietly hosted some of the world's more productive small telescopes since the early 1980s.

About Winer Observatory

The observatory has been operated by Mark and Pat Trueblood since 1983, giving research groups and universities a dark, reliable site to run robotic telescopes without maintaining their own facility.

History

Over the decades, Winer Observatory has hosted a string of notable instruments, including the Iowa Robotic Observatory and Michael Schwartz's supernova survey telescope, which operated there until Tenagra Observatories opened a nearby facility. Its best-known resident was the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT), which discovered more than 30 exoplanets during its time at the site.

Telescopes & research

Today the site houses the Iowa telescope, a telescope owned by a Polish university, and the Sutter Survey telescope, owned by the asteroid-mining company TransAstra, a reminder that the observatory's robotic-hosting model still attracts a wide range of research users.

Location & getting there

Winer Observatory sits near Sonoita, Arizona, in a rural, high-desert setting prized for its dark skies and stable observing conditions.

Visiting Winer Observatory

As a working robotic-telescope hosting site rather than a public visitor centre, access is limited; anyone interested should check the observatory's website before planning to visit.

See your named star from here

A site that has hosted an exoplanet-hunting telescope like KELT knows exactly how precise sky coordinates can be, the same kind assigned to every star named through Star Register. Browse the catalogue or name a star of your own.