Welcome to the Observatory's Front Page. Included here are some of the latest news and articles that may be of interest to our visitors.
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: April 30th, 2026.
The transition to the spring and summer night skies is almost complete. It is really apparent now as it doesn’t really get dark until 8:30 pm. In general, for this and next month, our Galaxy will appear near our horizon. The multitude of its interesting objects will not be visible to us as they will have to compete with the light pollution from the surrounding cities. Shown here is severe compressed “fish-eye” view of the sky at 9:15 pm on May 1st. The Galaxy’s multitude of objects in its plane are identified by the thicket of objects on the west side of image.
What will wee see for this and next month, will be the region of the sky that is north of our galactic plane, the few globular clusters that orbit on their own planes around the galactic center (below the horizon to the east) and galaxies beyond our own.
