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: Jun 1st, 2026.
The summer solstice is getting closer and closer, as it doesn’t really get dark until 8:30 pm. Below is shown what our sky would be like by 8:45 pm on the 5th! The main bright objects of our Galaxy appear near our horizon then. 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. But if you look to the west after sunset, you’ll have a chance to see four planets that way!
The planets are Jupiter, which is nearly at the opposite side of the solar system, Venus which is climbing higher and will soon be east of Jupiter, Mercury will make a short appearance, and of course, the planet you are standing on! What we will 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.
