When David Levy built Jarnac Observatory outside the small town of Vail, Arizona, he did so with the intent to continue his lifelong search for comets. He named the observatory for the pond near his childhood home in Canada. The observatory has recently given its name to the survey now based there, the Jarnac Comet Survey.

Located at 3600 feet at the foot of the Santa Rita Mountains in southern Arizona, the site affords extremely dark skies (it is located within a special region set aside to protect the nearby Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins from light pollution). With conditions better than the Catalina Observatory to the northeast and similar to Mt. Hopkins as well as Kitt Peak, but with much greater accessibility, the Jarnac Observatory is the perfect observatory solution for the survey operations conducted there.

On the observatory grounds is a classical rolling roof structure (shown above) that houses the survey instruments. A small dome also on the grounds contains a 0.5-m instrument unassociated with the Jarnac Comet Survey.

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