Stay tuned for more observatory dates after the holiday break!
Friday, December 13
Due to poor weather, we will not be open tonight. See you in the new year!
Friday, December 6
We are on for tonight! See you later today from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM!
Friday, November 22
We will not be open on the night of Friday, November 22 due to poor weather.
Friday, November 15
We will be open from 6:30 – 8:30 pm tonight, Friday, November 15. We’ll be looking at Saturn, the Double Cluster, and after 7:30 pm, Jupiter.
Friday, November 8
We will be open from 7:30 to 9:30 pm on the evening of Friday, November 8. Tonight, we’ll be looking at Saturn and (after 8 pm) Jupiter with the eyepiece.
RockOn Workshop – apply now for June 2025!
RockOn, a workshop at Wallops Flight Facility for sounding rocket payload design, is an exciting chance for faculty and students to kickstart payload projects at their home institutions. Participants in the workshop will build a working scientific payload and then see it launch on a real sounding rocket!
MDSGC intends to sponsor one or more teams for each year’s workshop and encourages Maryland students and/or faculty to submit applications for team sponsorship! For 2025, the RockOn registration is now open and closes on February 14, 2025. If you are interested for this year or an upcoming year, please visit NASA’s RockOn page to apply and also contact MDSGC to let us know of your interest.
Here is a summary of important information about RockOn 2025:
- Application deadline is 02/14/25 – but why wait?
- 1 faculty mentor from the applicant institution must be willing to attend.
- 2 students from the applicant institution must be able to commit to attending.
- Attending faculty and students must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
- Workshop dates are June 20-27, 2025.
- Location is NASA/Wallops, with hotels nearby in Chincoteague, VA.
- In order for you to participate, NASA must select your application – it’s not automatic.
- MDSGC will pay the workshop registration and travel costs for all Maryland institutions/participants that are selected, subject to the availability of funds.
Friday, November 1
We will be open the evening of Friday, November 1 from 8 to 10 pm.
From 8 to 9 pm, we’ll look at Ring Nebula and the Hercules Globular Cluster with the camera. After 9 pm, we’ll be looking at Saturn through the eyepiece.
Friday, October 25
We will be open the evening of Friday, October 25 from 7:30 – 9:30 pm. There’s a small chance we’ll get clouded out, so make sure to take a look at the sky before heading over later in the evening.
From 7:30 to 8:30 pm, we’ll say farewell to C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS by looking at it one last time with a camera on the refractor. After that, we’ll be looking at Saturn and the Hercules Globular Cluster.
Friday, October 18
We will be open from 7 to 9 pm tonight. From 7 to 7:45 pm, we’ll be looking at C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS with a camera on the refractor. 7:45 pm will be the last call to go up to the dome to see it, as it will be too low to look at by 8 pm. After that, we will look at Saturn and the Hercules Globular Cluster.