Big Bear Solar Observatory

Big Bear Solar Observatory This is the official page of the Big Bear Solar Observatory. It is located in Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California.

The Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) is home to the world's second (maybe third) largest solar telescope, the Goode Solar Telescope (GST). The BBSO is operated by the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

It’s been a busy summer! Between capturing exciting new data and battling cloudy skies and blurry atmospheric conditions...
08/14/2026

It’s been a busy summer! Between capturing exciting new data and battling cloudy skies and blurry atmospheric conditions, we managed to get some fantastic on disk observations as well as observations of solar prominences.

Here is a snapshot showing just how intricate they are. You can see vertical columns of glowing plasma, structures held up by dips in magnetic fields, and even "coronal rain" falling in the foreground. While these features likely belong to different solar structures, seeing them stacked together creates a beautiful, complex puzzle that is challenging to untangle.

We were always curious about those cyclic variations of the lake water level (blue line) after 1965. The gold line is th...
05/05/2026

We were always curious about those cyclic variations of the lake water level (blue line) after 1965. The gold line is the number of solar spots. They are only shown here to highlight 11-ish years intervals (analysis shows that there is no correlation between these two curves). The four water level cycles (1965- 2017) seem similar: rapid rise, broad double peaked plateau with a gradual decrease. It seems that the low 2020 and 2025 peaks belong to the 5th cycle. Are we then facing another 7 year long dry period? We do hope that we are not! )

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40386 North Shore Lane
Big Bear City, CA
92314

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