The BrightSkies Observatory is a remotely controlled observatory in upper northwest Washington, DC, 3.29 miles north of the US Naval Observatory. Located in a tree-infested, light-polluted neighborhood at a low elevation, it sees about 45% of the sky. At one o'clock a.m. it's often bright enough to read a newspaper "under the stars."

On the other hand, and on the "brighter" side, a 30-second exposure with an unfiltered, cooled CCD camera reaches 17th magnitude!

On this site, you can see some of the interesting pictures and other research results obtained at BrightSkies.