Every L.A. County Planetarium You Can Price, Ranked. The $4 Seat Beats the $12 One.

The criterion is what one adult pays for a seat under a dome that has a date posted, and what the ticket buys besides the show.

The cheapest planetarium seat in Los Angeles County costs $4, and it is not the one with the view of the city. Griffith Observatory prices an adult ticket to the Samuel Oschin Planetarium at $12, inside a building it advertises as free. Thirty miles east, in Walnut, Mt. San Antonio College posts $4 for a seat under the Randall Planetarium's dome and adds free telescope viewing once a month. We read six planetariums' own pages, priced a single adult seat at each, and counted the dates each one has actually posted between now and December.

The criteria, stated once. First, what one adult pays, including the fee the headline number leaves out. Second, whether a date is posted that a reader can put in a calendar — a dome with no date on it is a room. Third, what else the ticket buys: a telescope afterward, a free building around it, parking that doesn't cost more than the show. Every price and every schedule here comes from the institution's own page, checked September 4; two more county domes that post neither a current date nor a current price are dealt with at the bottom. Nobody from this desk sat in any of these seats.

1. Randall Planetarium, Mt. San Antonio College, Walnut — $4

Four dollars, and that is the adult price: the college's planetarium page lists "Kids/Adults" at $4.00, free for Mt. SAC students and faculty with ID, and parking at $5 a day. The parking costs more than the ticket, which is funny until you add it up — $9 for one person is still three dollars less than a Griffith seat before that lot is paid for. New shows go up every month, per the same page, and the college's observatory runs free telescope viewing once a month, weather permitting.

The catalogue is the other argument. The planetarium lists more than forty shows with run times and age guidance attached — Astronaut at 30 minutes for all audiences, Changing Skies at 50 minutes for ages 7 and up, Deep Space: Binocular Astronomy at 50 minutes for ages 12 and up. What it doesn't put on that page is dates; those live on a campus events calendar that would not load for us on September 4. Tickets sell online and at the door, and the planetarium answers a phone: (909) 274-5795.

2. Samuel Oschin Planetarium, Griffith Observatory — $12

Yes, we put the famous one second, behind a community college dome in Walnut, and this is the placement we expect to hear about. The Observatory posts $12 for adults 13 to 54, $10 for seniors 55 and up and for students and teachers, $8 for children 5 to 12, and free for children under 5 — who are admitted to the first show of the day only, on a lap, because the shows "are not appropriate for children under five years of age." The theater seats 290 and runs one of its three shows — Signs of Life and Centered in the Universe at 35 minutes, Water Is Life at 32 — every 60 to 90 minutes.

What $12 actually buys is the absence of planning. Tickets are sold at the Observatory, same day only, cash or card, on a schedule that runs six days a week: noon to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends, closed Monday, in a building whose own page says "Explore the universe for free in the heart of Los Angeles." Every other entry on this page asks you to check a calendar first. The argument for second place is arithmetic: $12 is 35 minutes under the dome, and $9 in Walnut is a 40-minute show, a parking space and a telescope. If the drive up and the free exhibits are the evening, Griffith wins the night — it just doesn't win the ticket.

3. Los Angeles Valley College Planetarium, Valley Glen — $6, four Fridays posted

Six dollars for adults, $5 for seniors and LAVC students with ID, $4 for children 8 to 12, free for members of the college's astronomy group — sold at the door from 7:30 p.m., no advance sales, and the shows "start promptly at 8 pm, and there is no late seating." Four dates are posted for the fall: Oasis in Space on September 18, Astronaut on October 16, Fall Skies on November 13 and Incoming! on December 11. Afterward the audience is invited to the observatory for a look through a 16-inch Celestron, weather permitting.

Two things worth knowing before the drive. The schedule repeated around the web says first Fridays; the group's own fall calendar says the 18th, the 16th, the 13th and the 11th, which are the third, third, second and second Fridays of those months — check the calendar, not the folklore. And this is the one entry on this page that will turn a family around at the door: "we cannot admit children under the age of 8." One hour, one show a month, and the cheapest telescope in the county attached to it.

4. John Drescher Planetarium, Santa Monica College — $10, plus a dollar

The most nights of anyone here except Griffith, at the price that reads cheapest and isn't. Santa Monica College posts $10 for adults and $7 for children 3 to 12 for either The Night Sky Show at 6 p.m. or the feature program at 7, and $16 for adults and $10 for children to sit through both. The shows run most Friday evenings and selected Sunday afternoons while the college is in session, each about 40 minutes with a short audience Q&A after.

Then there is the line most venues bury. The college's own announcement of a season states it plainly: tickets are sold online, and "a $1 per ticket service fee will be charged by the ticketing company." Campus parking is free, which on a page where the No. 1 pick's parking costs more than its ticket is worth a placement of its own. It lands fourth anyway, because $11 buys 40 minutes in Santa Monica and $6 buys an hour and a telescope in Valley Glen.

5. El Camino College Planetarium, Torrance — free, and dark

Free is the best price on this page, and here it is at No. 5, which is the whole argument of this ranking in one entry. The planetarium's shows page says the shows "are free for the community and fun for the whole family," and then says this: "We will not have any more shows until Fall 2026. Please check back in September." We checked again on September 7. Nothing was posted.

When it does run, it is a serious room for the money. The college describes a GOTO Chronos projector installed in spring 2005 that throws 8,500 stars down to magnitude 6.5, plus the planets and the Milky Way, alongside a fulldome projector by Ash Warped Media carrying three features — New Horizons, Universe and Stars of the Pharaohs. A free show you can't book is not a plan, and this is the entry to keep a tab open on.

6. UCLA Planetarium, Westwood — free, one published date

Also free, also hard to sit in. The astronomy department's own planetarium page returned a server error on every attempt we made on September 4, and its ticket store lists no public upcoming events at all. What the university does publish is one date: November 8, when the planetarium runs free shows during Exploring Your Universe, on the eighth floor of the Math Sciences Building, with graduate students narrating.

The ticketing for that day is the most Los Angeles arrangement on this page: free tickets, but physical ones, handed out at a booth at noon for the afternoon block and at 3 p.m. for the evening block, five to a person, with a standby line for the seats people give back. It ranks last because a ranking about seats has to rank the seat you can get, and this one is available on a single Sunday in November to whoever is already on campus at noon.

Not ranked, and why

Long Beach City College has a planetarium and, on the college's own events page, a run of free Planetarium Nights in Building D, room 326 — Fridays at 7 p.m., doors at 6:30, seating first come, no reservations. The dates are September 27, October 18, November 15 and December 6 of 2019. A page that has not been updated in seven years is a memory, not a schedule, so there is nothing here to price.

Pierce College's own listing for a planetarium show in Woodland Hills — the one page a search surfaces for public shows there — returned a 403 to every request we made on September 4, so there is no current schedule and no price to put against the others. Unchecked is not the same as closed. If the shows are running, this page will carry the correction.

One last piece of arithmetic, because it is the reason this ranking exists. Four of the six domes ranked here charge less than $10 and two of them charge nothing, which means the price of an evening under a projected sky in this county is mostly the drive. Griffith runs a show every day it is open, which is every day but Monday. The next date anyone else on this list has actually posted is September 18, at 8 p.m., in Valley Glen, and the door opens at 7:30.