Plan Your Visit

Schedule of Observation Days and Times:

Public Viewing Night Observations: 1st  Fridays & 3rd  Tuesdays of the month* 7:30 p.m. — Late

Location and Maps

Public Viewing Night Observations:

*  Our twice-a-month Public Viewing sessions are regularly scheduled on the 1st  Friday and 3rd  Tuesday of each month in place of our student's regular observations.   HOWEVER, this schedule may get altered due to events that have a particularly special astronomical interest.  Schedules that become altered due to either an event of astronomical interest or due to some other event (such as a University-wide football game) will be discussed about on the Front Page of the website and will be listed in our  Events Calendar.

There is NO charge for these Public Viewing sessions.  While anyone may attend these viewing sessions, students should not expect to receive credit for these sessions.

Please note that  night sessions are conducted in our  night mode, which uses all red lights.  We do this to avoid blue lights, which oversaturates our  rod  sensing cells in our eyes, temporarily degrading our  night  or  scotopic  vision.  Night vision is what people use to see the  faint nebular fuzzies  up in the sky, and it takes about 40 minutes to build up to its full strength. As white light contains lots of blue in it, we need to avoid it as well.  So as a curtesy to other visitors please turn off smart phones and PDAs for your own and other's sake. Use a nightmode to take photographs, or at least a red filter over your flash. Thank you.

 

Planning a Visit?

Are you planning to come for a visit? Some folks have come to visit from a rather long distance only to be surprised that they can not see what they wished to see. To prevent disappointments from your trip, here are a few simple tips to check out before you come:

1.) CHECK THE WEATHER. The General Sky Conditions links on the Observatory's Home Page include weather conditions as well as information about what is up in the sky. The Clear Sky Clock for Boca Raton provides information for the sky conditions for astronomers. In general, the darker blue squares are for a described hour are better conditions. The best conditions have columns of dark blue blocks for the hour. Clicking on the colored block bar of the Clear Sky Clock leads to more in depth coverage.

The three conditions to look for are:

  • Cloud cover - If you can not see the stars due to clouds, then you can not see them through an optical telescope either. Microscopic water droplets in clouds act like lenses, reflecting, refracting and redistributing light, which blurs stellar images. Radio telescopes can "see" through clouds, but we don't have those.
  • Transparency - Describes the atmosphere's clarity due to a lack of humidity, better transparency means better viewing conditions for nebulae and galaxies.
  • Seeing - Describes the atmosphere's stability, a less turbulent sky means better viewing conditions to see interesting details on the planets. There is often a reciprocal behavior between the transparency and the seeing.

2.) CHOOSE YOUR CLOTHING FOR THE WEATHER. While the Observatory facility is inside the campus's Science Building, you will experience outdoor conditions when the dome's doors open to the outside, for there is no glass separating you from the outdoors. A glass covering could not be made well enough to avoid disturbing a telescope's view. Domes need to be open for some time so that the temperatures can stabilize with the outside, otherwise, convection (where hot air moves up as cold air moves down) occurs. Looking at a star, while the air inside of the dome convects with the outside, shows a disturbed view of the star, just like looking through a mirage across a hot road on a summer's day or up at a light from the bottom of a pool. To avoid this, the dome is opened so that the air temperatures equalize and becomes more stable. Thus, it may be rather hot or cold in the room when you come.

3.) CHOOSE YOUR CLOTHING FOR COMFORT AND DECENCY. Ladies, I do not recommend heels nor skirts. The stairs to the platform are steep and you may have to wait a while on them for your turn. And then, if we are to look at objects that are near the horizon, you will also need to climb up a ladder to look through the telescope. To look in different directions, they swevel up and down much like a playground seesaw. So when it turns to look low to the horizon, its eyepiece end will turn up, so much so, that you will need to ascend either a step stool or even a step ladder to look through it. So, when climbing up, you may feel uncomfortable with the idea that there may be people looking up at you from the room below. I recommend you plan accordingly.

Of course an additional consideration for decent night sky viewing, is to have skies that are not filled up with man made sky glow. More information about this artificial intrusion into the wonders of the heavens can be found at this link of Light pollution vs. Astronomy page.