Oregon Observatory

We attended the night time observatory program in summer. The staff is outside early to direct you to buy tickets in the nature center. From there you can start looking through telescopes outside with staff setting them up for you and talking about what you see. There was then a 30 min program that was just outstanding. Very entertaining, but also very informative. The question time was great. Jerry was awesome, we all enjoyed his presentation. Then we walk back over to the telescope area for nighttime viewing. Again, the staff had different things set up and you just go from telescope to telescope checking it out. It was busy and you are waiting in line for some telescopes. The staff knows their stuff. Lastly, they do a green laser pointing out constellations. With clouds moving in our guy started a little early so we could get something. As it got cloudier he was still great, encouraging us to imagine things and line it up in the sky. Another staff person comes out saying a flare is coming in 2 minutes (light from satellite) and sure enough exactly where they said we all saw it.
This was an amazing experience for our family and I highly recommend it. It is in the Sunriver resort area, so you could eat dinner beforehand and then drive out to it. The staff were awesome and very intelligent about the subject matter. Funny too.