Marfa Lights Viewing Area - Marfa, Texas

Stacy B.

Arrived too early for the lights, but a beautiful place. Great viewing area with telescopes, nice walking path with informational signs, and nice restrooms. Just didn't stay because I still had a long way to drive that day.

ros M.

Good stop. Thought the building was a visitor center with a small shop and information but it's just toilets. Camped overnight along with 6 other rvs. Road was noisy but not too bad.

A D. C.

First time here and I saw several lights. I arrived at about 8:45 and stayed for an hour. Just a handful of people on a Friday night.
I didn't take any photos or videos because I thought the lights in the mountains were from cars. After speaking to several locals, they said there are no roads in the mountains where the lights are , so what I did see was actually the lights.

Fierce G.

I and a few other people were able to see the lights. Make sure to bring binoculars or a telescope!

The lights were observed 3/14/2025 around 9 pm (local time) - a bit after sunset and right around when the moon was a few degrees above the horizon. There were at least 3 lights observed and each was about 1 degree above the horizon, very faint, blinking, and not changing color.

The first one, and the one that reached the highest brightness, was about 30 or more degrees left from the shed. This one appeared blueish-white, a large halo from the dust, and it was the only one that reached a similar brightness to car headlights for a few seconds. Later in the night, we stabilized some binoculars on the railing and looked at this light, we discovered that it was actually 2 lights very close to each other. Other than when it got super bright for a few seconds, it was very faint to see with the naked eye (at its average, it was less bright than the visible stars.

The other notable light was about <5-10 degrees from the right of the shed. This one appeared every once in a while and was red. There was nothing observable to the naked eye around 9:40 pm (which is when I left shortly after). The moon was too bright and lighting up the horizon, and the dust was too optically thick. My hypothesis is there are lights quite frequently, but they are generally hard to see because of the dust and moon light. It's strange that there is photon emissions at single points in the sky at inconsistent brightnesses and color. It could be neutrinos, other space particles, or radiation from space following Earth's magnetic field (Southish to Northish) and causing photons to emit. Or maybe satellite adjustments. Or maybe a mirage caused by a temperature gradient in the atmosphere. But idk. I wish I had a spectrometer so I can see if there are any peak wavelengths. I also wish I brought a telescope and observed for more than 1 night. Some notes. It was extremely high wind (45 to 60 mph wind) and it felt like a dust storm was forming on my drive. I swear there were other lights South West, but we couldn't confirm. The lights weren't moving and we think one light we saw in the westish direction was some kind of radio tower, but the other ones were in a direction where the maps said there was nothing over there.

Brad S.

We saw many lights off in the distance but they looked more like car headlights, radio antenna, plane, etc. With all the lights in today’s world, there are thousands of explanations for what you see so it was hard to get excited about anything seen. However, the rest area was very nice and we stayed the night in our RV along with several others so from that perspective it was very nice.

Kayla K.

ever since they shut off the lights around the walls of the viewing area, (which they were annoying to have in the back where everyone is seated, yes) people have been forced to use flashlights to navigate to the back of the viewing center at night coming from the parking lot. This leads to people walking INTO the back area with flashlights on completely ruining everyones ability to get their eyes dilated.

whoever runs the viewing center should consider turning the wall lights back on at least before you get to the back of the viewing center, so people dont have to resort to using flashlights that end up ruining the ability to get dilated for everyone.

Luis P. H.

Disappointing for the Marfa lights. Everything we read pointed us to hwy67 and all the vehicle lights which appear to flicker and change color. But...we has an amazing ti.e viewing satellites, meteors and caught sight of the comet.

Debbie D. A. T.

It was a good place to watch the sunset; being rather cloudy. But, I think it was just a normal evening. However, there are several interesting plaques to read so you can walk and stretch your legs. Gonna spend the night and then mosey down the highway tomorrow to Big Bend.