Sunriver Nature Center & Observatory — Attraction in Sunriver

Not sure I would rate this establishment with more than two stars at this time due to my disappointing personal experience with them. I give 2 stars because I did talk with someone on the line after 3 tries over the 1.5 hours. She sounded preoccupied by other matters, but still listened and said she would alert the "others" to put out signs etc. There was no such attempts by the high heat of the day when the toads most likely moved to cooler locales and when we departed sunriver. It was early morning, we stopped to help these little guys cross while others drove by crunching them down. Thousands of these toads the size of nickels were trying to cross. From what I could observe, the Nature center's lack of response to the Spotted Toad migration is incredibly heartbreaking to witness as there was nothing put into place for this temporary annual migratory road and bike path crossing. Why not? What's more, their mail box was full so you would have to drive or ride your bike to their center to alert someone which ironically, is where the toad crossing is located. I am incredibly disappointed in Sunriver Nature Center, in humanity, in myself for continued daily driving impacts we on the planet. I am just hopeful that we could do more to learn to live among and within the environment that supports us. While waiting to get someone on the line, I looked up anything I could on this local occurrence and did come across something posted in 2014 about the unfortunate annual event - many of these spotted toads don't make it across the roads due to human bike and auto traffic, that their species...

I purchased 21 tickets for a public viewing for family members ages 16 to 83 who had gathered at Sunriver for our annual get-together. The PowerPoint started 10 to 15 minutes late and was mostly a "stall" maneuver (presenter's word) while staff set up equipment and it grew dark. There was very little "meat" to the presentation even though 90% of the audience looked to be well into adulthood. Then we were sent off into the darkness with no knowledge of what the layout of the grounds was. One of our party suffered a panic attack and had to return to the car for the duration. At most each person spent, 10 to 20 seconds at each telescope, so our group had about 7 total minutes of viewing time among the 21 of us. Actually, it was plenty of time to see a few binary stars (2 bright dots), nebula (very small fuzzy dots) and cluster of galaxies (nebula-like but not so fuzzy). The laser pointing at constellations was okay, and did have the only tidbit of new info for me about the north star changing. But no telescope was needed. By 10:30 it was pretty much over and people started leaving. But as we left the parking lot, about 11 p.m. the highlight of the evening occurred. The huge (just 1 day past its prime) strawberry moon could be seen rising from behind the treetops. We drove to our rental house and watched the free show from the deck. When the content is weak, planets are not visible and the moon is not up, at least warn people, reduce the...

I brought my family here for their excellent astronomy night. We’ve visited many observatories around the globe and found the observatory at Sun River Nature Center is an incredible resource for this area and the entire state of Oregon. We go several times per year to raise our awareness, broaden our perspective, learn about what’s happening in the universe. It really puts the toil of daily life in its place. Even for just an evening, to gather your family for a few hours and examine infinity, and eternity, to look at something that happened five thousand years ago, but it appears now, because it took that long for the light to arrive here, is truly amazing…the concept of light years, is mind blowing (without the psilocybin.) It’s humbling and I feel as though I am looking at the face of God when I climb the stairs to peek into the eyepiece of a massive telescope. Many thanks to the people of Oregon for keeping the night sky dark enough to see this great creation, and many thanks to Sunriver Nature Center and Observatory for the efforts in keeping this fantastic treasure active, alive, and...