Summer Visitors Program at Lick Observatory

You can visit Mt. Hamilton Lick Observatory during day light hours, but usually they are closed for public when the stars come out.
You can visit Lick Observatory at night during summer. They offer Summer Concert Series: http://www.ucolick.org/public/music.html or Summer Visitors Program: http://www.ucolick.org/public/sumvispro.html

Summer Visitors Program (SVP) is a wonderful opportunity to observe skies through both the 36-inch Great Lick Refractor and Nickel 40-inch Reflecting Telescope. Each evening also features 2 speakers and local amateur astronomers outside the building with additional telescopes and interesting stories.
Summer Visitors Program is extremely popular. If you are interested, I suggest you try to buy tickets for the program the moment they come up for sale.
For safety reasons, children under the age of 10 will not be admitted to SVP or Concert Series.
Also keep in mind: the road to observatory is a real mountain road: narrow and windy.

You can buy tickets on line: Summer Visitors Program Tickets
Or by phone at UCSC Ticket Office: 831-459-2159
Ticket price is $7.50 plus service fee. 

Each Program has its own Ticket Sale date. Ticket sales start at 10:00 AM sharp:

May 15 for June 15 Program
May 17 for June 29 Program
May 22 for July 13 Program
May 24 for July 27 Program
May 29 for August 10 Program
May 31 for August 24 Program

2012 Programs

Friday, June 15

Doors open: 7:30 pm
Start event: 8:30 pm
Speaker: Graeme Smith, UC Santa Cruz
Talk: Globular Clusters: Fossils in the Sky

Friday, June 29

Doors open: 7:30 pm
Start event: 8:30 pm
Speaker: Brian Siana, UC Riverside
Talk: A Cosmic Mystery: What Destroyed the Universe's Atoms?

Friday, July 13

Doors open: 7:30 pm
Start event: 8:30 pm
Speaker: Jonathan Fortney, UC Santa Cruz
Talk: Bizarre Planetary Systems Discovered by the Kepler Telescope

Friday, July 27

Doors open: 7:30 pm
Start event: 8:30 pm
Speaker: Adam Burgasser, UC San Diego
Talk: Dark Stars: The (Nearly) Invisible Universe of Brown Dwarfs

Friday, August 10

Doors open: 7:00 pm
Start event: 8:00 pm
Speaker: Tomasso Treu, UC Santa Barbara
Talk: What is the Universe made of? Cosmography with Gravitational Time Delays

Friday, August 24

Doors open: 7:00 pm
Start event: 8:00 pm
Speaker: Alice Shapley, UCLA
Talk: Galaxies and the Reionization of the Universe