Solar Beacon comes off the Bridge on Sept 30th.  Make your appointments soon!

Solar Beacon is an art installation on top of the Golden Gate Towers that reflects the Sun’s light throughout the Bay Area, calling attention to the man-made structure’s 75^th anniversary using the brightest natural light available. Observers of Solar Beacon will see two points of light, one on each tower top, that are bright as the Sun, but much smaller in size. Through an online interface, the public can Schedule a time-based performance, during which the observed spots of light will appear to turn on and off. Because the reflected light is projected in a narrow beam a half degree across, the performance only appears to a region around the observer (e.g. 17m at 2 km), but it can be seen by anyone in the Bay Area who has  direct view of the tops of the Golden Gate Bridge tower.

Solar Beacon acts as a bridge between Sun and Observer, Sky and Earth, Natural and Man-Made.  In concept and design it has connected Artist and Scientist as well as Golden Gate Bridge Engineers and Aeronautical Engineers from the Space Sciences Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley. During the 75th Anniversary celebrations and the months that follow, the solar beam will directly link the line of sight between the public and the Bridge they love.

Below is today’s schedule for locations you might see Solar Beacon. It includes standard locations as well as personally scheduled pointings. (Note, more western locations, like the East Bay, Pier39 and Hyde St., are not accessible late in the afternoon when the Sun gets low in the sky. At that time, Baker Beach and Lands End are better). Send us feedback, positive or negative on the Feedback page.

Todays Schedule Click Here

To view events scheduled by users on a particular day, select the day and month here (now with a map of events!):

Additionally, at the start of each day we schedule events automatically if there are spare time slots. The link above (“Todays Schedule”) has the full schedule for today.