Tours at Palomar Observatory

For many years, our schedule of guided tours has been the mainstay and most popular element of the Observatory’s public program. A docent-led tour creates opportunities for discussions and questions that are not present in a self-guided tour. During shutdown, we are able to offer one-hour-long Virtual Narrated Tours of the 200-inch Hale Telescope guided by Observatory docents. In this program we:

1. Cover the same material ordinarily presented during an in-person tour in the dome;
2. Allow for audience discussions with a docent tour guide; and,
3. Simulate as closely as possible the experience of our long-standing guided tour program in a virtual setting.

Virtual narrated tours use the virtual tour media linked above as context and Zoom as the communications medium. An Observatory docent joins each Zoom meeting and conducts the audience on a multi-location “virtual walk” through the Hale Dome. Each tour is scheduled for a date and time specified by the requesting organization and content can be tailored to the requesting group: general tour presentations will focus on observatory facilities, development, science history, and current research; education-focused presentations will place greater emphasis on career opportunities in astronomy and astrophysics.

Virtual narrated tours are scheduled a minimum of two weeks in advance by communicating with Observatory Events Coordinator Steve Flanders: flanders [at] caltech.edu. There is no charge for civic, service, and educational groups—e.g, libraries, alumni/ae, and school groups. We encourage student groups at the high-school level and above to participate and will supply a list of the Observatory’s current research projects in advance of the tour for the purposes of student discussion.