Name: Telescope farm lets customers rent a piece of the night sky
Uploaded: 2025-11-13T00:55:54.986Z
Duration: 2 min 54 s
Description: By day, a row of plain-looking sheds in sleepy Rockwood, Texas, looks like nothing more than a place to store farm tools and feed. But when the sun dips below the horizon, their roofs peel back in unison to reveal a hidden network of hundreds of telescopes.

By day, a row of plain-looking sheds in sleepy Rockwood, Texas, looks like nothing more than a place to store farm tools and feed. But when the sun dips below the horizon, their roofs peel back in unison to reveal a hidden network of hundreds of telescopes.

Rockwood

A telescope farm in Rockwood, Texas, is enabling amateur astronomers from around the world to remotely operate their telescopes and capture clearer images of the night sky. The facility, operated by Starfront, addresses the growing problem of light pollution, which a 2023 study found is making the night sky 10% harder to see each year.

Customers from locations with heavy light pollution, such as suburban Detroit, can now access dark skies by shipping their telescopes to Texas and controlling them online. This setup not only enhances astronomical observation but also allows discoveries of previously unseen celestial objects, helping to preserve the sense of wonder inspired by the cosmos.

Telescope farm lets customers rent a piece of the night sky

The sun and the earth teamed up to put on quite the show last night, a full color production known as the Northern Lights. There is another performance tonight visible in northern states. Light pollution can make it hard to see such wonders of the sky, but a possible solution is sprouting up, sprouting up on a farm in Texas. David Schechter has tonight's Eye on America. In sleepy Rockwood, Texas, nothing much ever seems to happen until the roofs roll back off these sheds and reveal a telescope farm? Does it ever get old seeing all those roofs go at the same time? No, it has not gotten old yet. It's so cool. Yeah, it's cool every single time. Bray Falls is an amateur astronomer. He turned his passion into a business 18 months ago when he co-founded a company called Starfront. It rents space to customers who ship their telescopes here and then control them through the internet from their homes. This location allows amateur stargazers to take stunning pictures such as these because the sky here is much darker than where they live. Where are some of the farthest places that people will tunnel to this location tonight? We have a lot of customers in Europe, Indonesia, there's a guy in the UAE, Japan. Starfront is helping solve astronomy's biggest problem, light pollution. A 2023 study in the journal Science found every year the sky is getting 10 percent harder to see. This map shows the scope of the problem, which is particularly bad in the eastern U.S. Chuck Ayoub in suburban Detroit showed us his garage full of telescopes, but he hardly uses them anymore after shipping one out to Texas. What's the difference between having it at your house and having it out in Texas? Well the big difference are the dark skies. I am 20 minutes from downtown Detroit and that light pollution is a killer. Most nights Ayoub live streams his telescope feed to his large social media following. There's also a little camera at the base so he can see the telescope in action. Chuck is in Detroit controlling this thing in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Yes. Oh he's live right now. He is. Hey Chuck. From out here, Falls and others are identifying objects no one's ever seen before, such as this photo he calls the Crown of Thorns Nebula. It's furthering our understanding of space, even as our ability to see it is fading. What's the threat you think to our existence as humans from light pollution? It really prevents people from dreaming, like seeing what's above them. Just awe. You know, you get the tingles, you get the goose bumps. Now it's a feeling you can get. It's such an amazing thing. Even from your basement in Detroit. For Eye on America, I'm David Schechter in Rockwood, Texas.

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