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FAU's Astronomical Observatory is housed under a four meter diameter dome on the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University. We welcome students, faculty, staff and members of the general public to join our scheduled observations or our public viewing events. Our telescope is mounted on a small platform, at the top of stairs, looking out of the roof of our building, over Boca Raton, to space and beyond!
Section updated: July 3rd, 2026.
Summer is here. Expect it to not get dark until 8:30 pm. By my program’s calculations, at 1:39:15 am on July 3rd, we will have reached aphelion at 1.016646607 au, our greatest distance away from the Sun in this orbit. Thereafter, we begin to fall towards the Sun until we reach perihelion in early January and our orbital speed will increase as we do. And as we have passed the solstice, our starry nights are already getting longer!
Below is shown what our sky would be like by 9:45 pm on the 3rd. The main bright objects of our Galaxy are rising up to meet us by late evening. The multitude of its interesting objects are beginning to become apparent to us as the pink circles you see in the image below, though they are challenged by the light pollution from the surrounding cities. In the western horizon, the only planet to notice is bright Venus in front of Leo the lion.
In the west, we see the noticeably bright planet Venus appears about to be eaten by Leo the Lion! Note how as it climbs further away from the Sun for the next few months it gets progressively brighter too. We’ll start there in the early evening to observe its nearly 1st quarter phase. Know that this would be an impossible view according to ancient Ptolemy, who wrote the Almagest, had insisted that it orbited on an epicycle around a fixed midpoint between the Earth and the Sun. But Galileo argued that if Venus did so, then all we would ever see of it would be its thin crescent phase as we would forever look upon its night side. So, in order for us to see Venus lit up by over half its surface like we will that night, both Galileo and Copernicus argued that it must be coming toward us from the far side of the solar system as it orbits the Sun. In fact, on the 5th, Venus will be 1.019775 au away from us, which is nearly as far away as the Sun would be then. So, viewing Venus early in the evening will give you a chance to personally eyewitness proof that the Earth is not at the center of the solar system!
If the sky is cooperative and we’re ambitious, we can try for the variety of galaxies later on, such as M84, 86, 87, 89, 58, 60. There will also be globular clusters, such as M53, NGC5634 in Virgo, NGC4590 in Hydra, NGC 5897 in Libra, M5 in Serpens Caput, far to the south, NGC 5349, aka Ω Centauri. And still later on, M13 & M92 in Hercules.
