Is the Stargazing on a Pinnacles Tour Any Good?

Good on a clear night, with limits worth knowing. These are sightseeing evenings with a stargazing part at the end, not astronomy courses: two of the four tours in the table below bring telescopes, and a third is “a relaxed sightseeing tour rather than a professional astronomy-based expedition”. How much you see depends on the cloud, the moon and the guide, and several guests’ complaints are about a telescope left unused or unexplained.

What each tour brings for the stars

GetYourGuide listings, checked November 2026.

The sky itself is the draw. The Pinnacles are 189 km by road from Perth city centre, and on a clear night the distance from the city shows: guests on both Autopia Tours’ and Lumineer Adventure Tours’ tours write about seeing the Milky Way.

What guests saw

On Autopia Tours’ evening, guests in April and September 2026 saw the Moon close up through the telescope, and two in September 2026 saw Venus. One in July 2026 wrote that the highlight was the Milky Way, visible to the naked eye. In October 2026 a guide pointed out Scorpius and Sagittarius on a cloudy night and “ensured we could see the shapes”.

On Lumineer Adventure Tours' day, guests between November 2025 and October 2026 wrote about Saturn’s rings through the telescope; one in February 2026 saw “Jupiter and Saturn via his telescope” with “binoculars for everybody”, and another in April 2026 was shown phone settings for photographing the stars.

What disappointed some guests

Several of the complaints are about the telescope, not the sky:

• On Autopia Tours’ evening, a guest in May 2026 could see nothing through the telescope; a French guest in April 2026 wrote that it was not explained, so it was no use to anyone who did not know how; another in April 2026 was disappointed that the telescope was not set up; and one in March 2026 wrote that “star gazing with telescope did not work”.
• One of Autopia Tours’ guests in late October 2026 left the desert before it was fully dark and missed the Milky Way. From mid-November to February the sky is not fully dark until about 20:20 at the earliest and 21:02 at the latest; see the best nights.
• On Lumineer Adventure Tours' day, a guest in April 2026 found the stargazing busy because “many cars were coming into the desert”, and children noisy in the dark; another that month found the group too big for two guides, though one of them “was very informative about the stars and planets”. A guest in November 2025 wished there had been more time for stargazing.
• Cloud: on any of these tours, a cloudy night can mean few stars or none. Cloudy nights has each tour’s terms.

Who will be disappointed

If you want long, quiet hours at an eyepiece, a choice of targets or a session for astrophotography, none of the tours compared here is that. Each fits the stars in at the end of a long afternoon of travel, sunset and dinner, shared with a group. Australian Pinnacle Tours' evening is the plainest about it.

If you want to see the southern sky properly once, with someone naming what you are looking at, and a look at the Moon or a planet through a telescope, the evenings deliver that on a clear night. The difference between them is the kit: Lumineer Adventure Tours' telescopes and binoculars, or Autopia Tours' telescope and picnic. What you can see from the Pinnacles shows the sky by month.