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: Aug 1st, 2025
This region is chock full of interesting things to see. We’ll check on the status of T Corona Borealis and examine the globular clusters of M3 in Canes Venatici, M5 in Serpens Caput and Hercules’ M13 & M92 , M53 in Coma Berenices along with its Coma Star Cluster. Depending upon the conditions, we can try for a few galaxies that night, or even Omega Centauri in the south. If that is visible to us, then after 9:15 pm, we could push on toward Rigel Kentaurus (a.k.a “Alpha Centauri” the next star out), or Becrux and Gacrux of the Southern Cross. (They would be a challenge through the skyglow of Ft. Lauderdale & Miami, so there is no guarantee there!) By 10 pm, those constellations toward the Milky Way Galaxy’s central bulge will be appearing to us, such as Libra (see if you can notice the supposed “greenish” tint of its star Zuben Elgenubi!), M10 & M12 in Ophiuchus the serpent bearer, and Scorpio with its Cat’s Eye Nebula (M4) and the Northern Jewel box (NGC 6231), as will the northern summer constellations, like Lyra, its star Vega and its Ring Nebula - M57. The summer constellations dominate our view tonight.
There will be a 1st quarter Moon that appears in Libra south of Zubenelgenubi, the fulcrum star of its scales. Mars appears quite small and is distant at 2.12 au away. It appears next to Virgo’s outreached left hand star Zavijava. And we’ll be able to end the evening looking eastwards at Saturn and its moons.
