About SFO

The San Fernando Observatory (SFO) is an educational and solar research facility belonging to California State University Northridge (CSUN) and operated by the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Originally built by The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo in the mid-1960’s as ground-based support for NASA’s space program, the observatory was donated to CSUN in 1976 and has continued to play an important role in solar astronomy since then. Located in the San Fernando Valley, SFO enjoys its best observing weather during the summer months when the Sun is high in the sky, resulting in long observing days with clear skies, stable air, and little chance of rain.

Numerous solar research programs and telescopes have come and gone over the life of the Observatory but the longest and most successful of these is the Photometry Program begun in 1985 and continuing to the present. In 2016, the Photometry telescopes and associated equipment were moved from their original location near the Los Angeles Reservoir to a new building on the CSUN campus, roughly eight miles away, and have continued to provide full-disk, photometric images of the Sun, in several different wavelengths, to the scientific community, providing one of the longest existing ground-based photometric records of solar features.

We are thankful for ongoing support from NASA and CSUN, as well as past support from NASA, NSF, DoD, the Parsons Foundation, and others, over the years.