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This is the latest in a series of stories by The Six Fifty about clubs and groups around Silicon Valley to meet new people, explore hobbies and foster community.
The observatory dome above Los Altos Hills opens as a volunteer adjusts the telescope, shifting its focus from the sun to Venus — visible even in the midday sky. One by one, visitors step forward to look.
The Peninsula Astronomical Society (PAS) has been creating moments like this since 1949, predating Silicon Valley. For over 75 years, PAS has drawn amateur astronomers, curious newcomers and those prone to tilting their heads at the night sky in wonder.
Members of the Peninsula Astronomical Society enter the Foothill College Observatory in Los Altos Hills on July 3, 2026. Photo by Claire Haughey. 
Volunteers from the Peninsula Astronomical Society run the free public program at Foothill College Observatory on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Photo by Claire Haughey. 
Members of the Peninsula Astronomical Society wait in line outside of the Foothill College Observatory in Los Altos Hills on July 3, 2026. Photo by Claire Haughey. 
The Peninsula Astronomical Society trains its volunteers to operate the observatory, welcoming varying experience levels. Photo by Claire Haughey.
When Foothill College was established just over a decade later in 1960, a club member donated his personal telescope to the new institution, with one condition: The college had to hold regular public viewing sessions. The college agreed, built an observatory to house it and opened its doors on Friday nights.
The deal has held for more than 60 years. The arrangement nearly collapsed in 1977, when California’s Proposition 13 capped property tax increases and gutted funding for community colleges statewide. Foothill College could no longer pay anyone to run the public observing nights, but the club stepped in, offering to volunteer as long as the college kept the observatory and its telescope operational.
Since then, volunteers from the Peninsula Astronomical Society have run Foothill’s free public program every Friday night from 9-11 p.m. and Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. to noon (weather permitting). On sunny Saturday mornings, the telescope is pointed to the sun or brighter planets like Venus or Jupiter.
Allen Frohardt has been a volunteer for the past 15 years, operating the telescope and guiding visitors through their first close-up views of Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons and whatever else the sky offers that night. He has looked through the eyepiece more times than he can count — but it’s what happens on the other side that keeps him coming back.
“There’s a lot of stuff out there,” Frohardt said. “But you have to go out there and look for it.”
The club also trains its volunteers to operate the observatory, welcoming varying experience levels. Club president Gary Baker said in recent years, volunteers tend to be younger and have less experience.
Each new volunteer will go through one initial training course with Baker and be sent home with a telescope to practice before being assigned to public nights.
Baker also started as a volunteer in 1999, shortly after he moved to the Bay Area, and became the club’s president in 2010. The best part of the job, he said, is sharing the first-time view in the telescope.
“That never gets old for me and I think that’s a big motivator for me to keep doing this,” he said.
Volunteers are trained not just to operate equipment, but also to meet visitors where they are — to translate the scale of the cosmos into something a child can grasp, or a first-time visitor can carry home. Sometimes, that looks like giving new visitors “bedtime reading,” or one of the many astronomy books the club keeps in the observatory.
“There are 5- or 6-year-old kids that just won’t stop asking questions,” Baker said.
He said the guiding philosophy has always been to make the observatory feel welcoming rather than intimidating.
“I feel like we have an opportunity, you know, or an obligation even to kind of share what we know and at least kind of open the door a little bit for them, point them in the right direction so that they know where to go find the next answers to the questions,” he said.
Board member Antonio Martinez has seen that effect play out over years. One young visitor, he recalled, came to the club not knowing how to get started in astronomy. Over time, she found her footing.
“She came in not knowing how to get started,” Martinez said, “and now she’s winning internships and heading to college.”
The club has worked to extend that reach beyond the observatory. In recent years, PAS has rebuilt its public lecture series, with Martinez helping connect the group to speakers at institutions like Stanford University’s Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.
April’s lecture drew close to 100 people, a club record. Stanford master student Michelle Park presented about the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, which came online about a year ago. The observatory now generates roughly 20 terabytes of astronomical data every day — “like drinking from a firehose,” Martinez explained.
For a club that also saw a dip in participation through COVID, the return of those events has helped restore momentum. A talk by author David Barron on the history of America’s Mars obsession is scheduled for July 16. The club also hosts larger star parties once or twice a year, sometimes drawing a thousand people in a single night.
At the observatory, nights still run the same way they have for decades. Astronomy, Baker said, runs deeper than most people realize. The seven-day week, the length of the month, the 365-day year — all rooted in the sky.
“You realize the universe is way bigger than you thought,” Baker said. “We’re just a small part of it.”
The Peninsula Astronomical Society’s public observing nights are free and open to all on Fridays from 9–11 p.m. and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon at Foothill College, 4100 Perimeter Road, Los Altos Hills (weather permitting). PAS also holds its club meetings featuring speakers on astronomy the second Friday of every month at 7:30 p.m. Meetings are free and open to the public. Membership is $25 per year and supports public events. Learn more at pastro.org and meetup.com/peninsula-astronomical-society.
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