The Stars at Night

Space may be the final frontier, but frontiers are a Texas specialty. The enormous dark skies of West Texas have long provided a stellar window into the infinite cosmos, which helped lead to the establishment of the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis in 1939. And when the federal government went looking for a home for its space program in 1961, Houston provided the land for its massive Johnson Space Center—and became inextricably linked with human space flight in popular culture. (“Houston, we have a problem.”)

Over time, that association has made Texas a booming location for the field of astrotourism.

“We certainly see it in the composition of our guest profile,” says Keesha Bullock, chief of communications at Space Center Houston, explaining that many of those who come to the museum aren’t local and arrive from other states or countries. And attendance is only growing with more than 1.25 million visitors each year.

From museum exhibits to stargazing opportunities—and a few festivals celebrating the more extraterrestrial sides of space travel—Texas has plenty of ways to get you as close to the stars as you can get without strapping into a rocket.

To Infinity and Beyond

SPACE MUSEUMS

No astrotourist’s checklist is complete without a visit to Space Center Houston, the official visitor center of NASA Johnson Space Center. Opened in 1992 as essentially the public face of NASA, the 250,000-square-foot educational complex features more than 400 space artifacts, behind-the-scenes NASA Tram Tours, collections of multiple spacecraft and spacesuits, replica space shuttles, and astronaut lectures. “We’re the only place that the public really has access to the federal facility,” Bullock says. “It’s a place for us to showcase the past, present, and future of space exploration.”

Other Texas museums also offer a window into the cosmic void, though generally not as the main course. The Texas Natural History & Science Museum in Austin is running an exhibit named Big Eye on Dark Skies: the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, featuring a scale model of the UT Austin McDonald Observatory’s Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET), the largest optical telescope in North America.

At the Perot Museum in Dallas, the Expanding Universe Hall is full of interactive displays focusing on the relative scale of celestial bodies like the planets and asteroids.

And if you want to see where some of those celestial bodies (a minor one, thankfully) crashed to Earth, check out the Odessa Meteor Crater Museum, a crater that time and erosion have left over 500 feet wide and 15 feet deep.

Looking Up

DARK SKIES

Light pollution can play havoc with people’s attempts to commune with the cosmos—but there are places in Texas dark enough to permit a clear view of the infinite, from our planetary neighbors to the vast sweep of the Milky Way. If you’ve got your own telescope—or even a decent pair of binoculars—you can head out to the Hill Country towns of Dripping Springs (the first in the state to establish itself as an International Dark Sky Community) Fredericksburg, and Blanco, where community ordinances keep the sky dark enough to stargaze. For more adventurous sorts, trek out to West Texas and visit the deserts around Big Bend National Park, which the International Dark Sky Association designated a Gold Tier park—the darkest of dark skies—in 2012.

If you’re headed to West Texas but don’t own a telescope, don’t worry: the McDonald Observatory has you covered. The desert outpost is a leading facility for astronomical research, and contains an array of telescopes as well as a packed calendar of visitor events, including Special Viewing Nights that give you access to the two big telescopes, Star Parties, and—if your timing’s lucky—the chance to book a room in the onsite Astronomers Lodge. Perched atop Mount Locke at 6,700 feet, the space is billed as the “highest lodging” in Texas and is only available by special request. An alternative spot to crash your spaceship is at the Marathon Motel just north of Big Bend, which has phenomenally dark skies and a high-powered individual telescope available to rent for visitors to examine stars up close. (For more ideas on where to stay the night under the stars, go here.)

“There are two gateway drugs to science for little kids. One is dinosaurs. The other is the night sky,” says Chris Snedon, an astronomer who has long worked with the observatory. “What I’ve seen over and over again is families who will plan entire vacations with the observatory as the central focus. So it’s an amazing draw.”

Ready for Lift Off

SPACE LAUNCHES

Unless you’re a billionaire, commercial spaceflight is—for now, at least—a pipe dream. But Texas does offer opportunities to watch companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX attempt to pave the way for it. The controversial private rocket company maintains a launch pad in Boca Chica, and Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island provides a good view of the company’s occasional launches. If you want to watch a rocket explode —thankfully with no humans aboard—there’s truly no better place, though the beaches might disagree.

And on April 14, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, whose launch site is based in Van Horn, will conduct an all-female trip to space with Gayle King, Katy Perry, and more.

Otherworldy Delights

COSMIC EATS

NASA’s presence in Houston has given the metropolis the nickname of “Space City,” with a dizzying array of space-themed food options. Among the most famous of them are Roswell’s Saloon—a campy space-themed bar full of glow-in-the-dark neon colors, alien and retro space kitsch, lava lamps, and a decidedly pulpy flavor—and Interstellar Confections, a purveyor of nebula-colored chocolates in out-of-this world colors.

If you’re in the San Antonio area, the ice cream establishment SNAK-X Ice Creamiverse serves cosmic ice cream creations like the Alien Sangre Nada and the Stardust Queen. In Arlington, the family-owned Rocketbelly serves up “rocket”-fried chicken in a space-themed setting, complete with a self-serve Boba tea bar.

The Truth Is Out There

UFO SIGHTINGS

For some people, just contemplating the infinite void isn’t enough: They want to try their luck at seeing whatever far-out entities sail through it. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, Texas racked up around 5,862 sightings of supposed alien craft from 1949 to 2022, including reports of everything from flying saucers to mysterious glows darting through the night. The most famous of these remains the Marfa Lights: strange lights—sometimes red, white or blue—that dance and dart on apparently random nights on the southeastern horizon of the town. The phenomenon—natural or unnatural—is a major tourist draw for the area, with the Marfa Lights Festival, a popular late-summer event in the West Texas town, with live music, food, and a parade, and the official Marfa Lights Viewing Area, located 9 miles east of town on U.S. 90, toward Alpine.

Another annual August event themed around mysterious sightings is Jefferson’s UFOcon. Organized by Craig Woolheater, it covers Texas-based UFO sightings, alien encounters, and UFO crash sites.

Lubbock had its own run-in with mystery lights in 1951, with dozens of people reporting sightings of mysterious blue-green glows in the night sky. And down in the Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg has had its own UFO Festival since 2012. The festival gets its origin from a UFO sighting from 1966, when eight men were terrified by an apparition that appeared out of the night, humming and shooting fire. That particular emanation has not returned—at least not in a verifiable way—but you’ll never go wrong in Texas if you keep watching the skies.