Observatory Home Page

The observatory is located on the roof of the new Rockville Science Center. It is home to two 14-inch Celestron (CGE PRO 1400 HD) telescopes inside a rolling roof structure as well as piers for three 8-inch Celestron  (CPC 800 GPS) telescopes surrounding the observatory. The roof-top area also has lots of open space for the set up of portable telescopes and tripod mounted binoculars.

Additional instrumentation includes CCD cameras, photometry equipment, spectrometer, and filters for solar observing (white light and H-alpha). The observatory also has specialized scopes for solar observing, including a Coronado SolarMax 90 and Coronado PST.

The observatory is used as part of the astronomy course curriculum, student research, as well as education and public outreach projects.

Although the observatory was open to the public every first and third Friday of the month for the past several semesters, continued construction on the new Science Center and Science East building is keeping us from opening our doors for the time being. There were several unforeseen issues with the Science East construction that are delaying the final fixes on the observatory roof. 

I sincerely apologize for the delays. I am anxious for the construction to finish so that we can resume our regularly scheduled public nights. In the mean time, we are working on scheduling some special events, including solar observing, that do not involve the observatory roof. Special events will appear on this  and the "Event Schedule" page.