Wed. 4/16: We'll Be Open From 8:30 - 9:45 Tonight!

Picture of the Day!

NGC 6188 Nebula is also known as the Firebird Nebula. It is an emission nebula located near the edge of a vast, dark molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, approximately 4,000 light-years from Earth.

A personal item was found on the observatory decks the day after our public night. If you lost something, check with the Dean's office in the DMF Science and Math Center!

If galaxies could talk, we’d want to ask for this galaxy’s skincare routine!

Meet I Zwicky 18, a galaxy lying 60 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

The bluish-white knots in the center are regions where stars are forming at a rapid rate. These large hubs of stellar creation and the lack of heavy elements in the surrounding gas caused astronomers to think that this dwarf irregular galaxy was very young, since it resembles galaxies in the early universe.

However, the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that I Zwicky 18 is more mature than it first appears. Hubble found faint, older stars within the galaxy, indicating that I Zwicky 18 has been forming stars for more than a billion years.

Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Aloisi (Space Telescope Science Institute and European Space Agency).

ALT TEXT: A bright white and blue oval-shaped area takes up most of the view and is largely centered. Cloud-like wisps of blue material surround the bright-white center, forming a fluffy wreath-like shape. The fluffy material begins as light blue near the center and gradually darkens moving outward. Stars, seen as many bright white and yellow small points of light, are densely grouped in the white and light blue region, forming two roughly circular clumps, one in the upper left and one in the lower right. The corners of the image are dark and mostly empty, with a few larger, fuzzy yellow points of light scattered infrequently throughout.

Each fall and spring season, we host a set of public observatory nights on Wednesday evenings. This spring, we're set to start on March 19, weather allowing. Schedule coming soon!

Wed. 7/31: We'll be closed tonight due to clouds. Stay tuned for updates about August!

July 2024 Public Nights

The observatory will be open to the public, weather allowing, on Wednesdays July 24 and 31 from 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm. Please check back the afternoon of the event for our weather decision!

Wed. Nov. 1: Cloudy tonight. The observatory will be closed.

We're not yet sure about tonight's weather - it depends on whether these clouds move north or south. Check back in a few hours!

WOW!

Original Post on X

Zoozve, my beloved

Video of the Day!

Hubble has discovered that Jupiter’s red spot - a storm larger than Earth - is wobbling!