Starfront Observatories near Brady, Texas hosts telescopes from astronomers worldwide, drawn by its dark skies free from light pollution. The facility uses fast f/2 lenses that collect light three times faster than standard equipment, with a single telescope setup costing around $20,000. When the warehouse ceiling retracts at night, it reveals a sky most people never see.
At first I was like, where the hell are we? We are on the outskirts of Brady, Texas now.
All the best shoots involve a dirt road.
This is the entrance to Starfront Observatories. This is Sophie the dog. And this is Bray Falls, which sounds like a city in Texas.
People from all around the world send their telescopes here to observe the night sky from this place. No light pollution.
I like space. I've written books about it, made movies, but Bray takes it to a whole new level. Does any one of these jump out as this is an awesome telescope that everybody would really want?
Yours? Mine's the coolest one in here. It's intended for very fast photography. Each of these lenses is f/2. And so with 3 of them, I can get 3 times the exposure in a given amount of time, which lets me collect a ton of light super, super quickly. Cool. How much did this cost? Maybe all in like $20K with the filters and everything else. So it's like a— it's an investment, man. Yeah.
Then it started to get dark. The warehouse ceilings pulled back, and that's when things got beautiful. How often does this palette come around?
This will be the only time in our lives.
Oh.
Yeah.
So we should appreciate this deeply.
Yeah.
Okay.
