Observatory FAQs

A regularly-updated list of frequently-asked questions about the observatory.

Is the observatory going to be open for the upcoming meteor shower?

Alas, we are generally not open for meteor showers. There are several reasons for this:

Meteor showers are best viewed very late at night, after midnight and later. The observatory has very few staff, and so we rely heavily on volunteers to put on events. As you might imagine, it’s often hard to get staff or volunteers with day jobs to agree to set up and run an event that happens in the wee hours of the morning well before dawn.
Meteor showers are best viewed without any optical aid at all. The observatory has a lot of telescopes but they are literally useless for watching meteors, which appear without warning in all parts of the sky and only appear for an instant. It is impossible to point a telescope at a meteor in time to see it, and if you just try to point a telescope at some random patch of sky, hoping for a meteor to pass through the field of view, you’ll likely be totally disappointed. Meteors are best watched with the naked eye where you have an unobstructed view of a large chunk of the sky.
Meteor showers are best viewed far away from light pollution. Some times you will read in the news about meteor showers coming up that breathlessly promise 25, 50, 100 or more meteors per hour. It’s important to know that those numbers represent an ideal case where (a) the observer is far away from any lights (in astronomer parlance, where you can see stars down to 6th magnitude), and (b) where the meteors are near the zenith, directly overhead (and so minimizing atmospheric absorption of their light). At our observatory, there is obviously a great deal of light pollution from UCF itself and from the general Orlando area, so we get skies that are nowhere near as dark. Watching a meteor shower on the observatory lawn will pretty much guarantee that you’ll see way, way fewer meteors than the predictions say.

OK mister smarty-pants, well then where should I go to see the upcoming meteor shower?

Our advice is to go somewhere where you can satisfy the three conditions mentioned above. Go as far away from light pollution as possible, where you can see most of the sky, and where you’ll be able to stay for several hours very late at night without arousing suspicion or being hassled.

One spot might be by the St. Johns River on SR 50. It’s easy to get to from the UCF area, is a ways outside Orlando, is not too close to the lights of Titusville, and isn’t forested.

Another spot could be farther south, toward the town of Harmony on US 192, southeast of St. Cloud. Harmony regulates their lighting and so is darker than normal, and so they are friendly toward people staring at the night sky. Plus it is in even farther out of the metro-Orlando area.

You can gauge the relative brightness of the sky with this handy light-pollution map, linked here and here. It’s probably best to find a location that’s either in the yellow, brown, green, or blue areas. (As you can see, most of metro-Orlando is white, purple, red, and orange.)

As always when watching meteors, take responsibility for your own safety. Go in a group, be aware of your surroundings, and trust your instincts if something about a place doesn’t feel right. Furthermore, there is a lot of private land in Florida, so don’t trespass.

Any other advice that would improve my chances of enjoying the upcoming meteor shower?

Be patient, stay up as late as possible, make it a social event with friends, and be comfortable.

Note that even a meteor shower with a predicted rate of 60 — when you’re in a dark place — still means that you might be waiting an entire minute or two in between meteors. Think about that — 60 seconds of waiting for 0.5 seconds of a meteor. That ratio means patience is vital! And if there’s light pollution, you might be waiting 5 minutes or more. So be realistic in your expectations.

Some online resources about meteor shower watching in general are provided by Sky & Telescope.

I’d really like to have a private event for my group at the Observatory, do you do that?

Yes! Send us an email with the following info:

Whether you are interested in a daytime or a nighttime event. (Note that a daytime event will have WAY fewer things to see in the sky, because it’s, you know, daytime….)
What dates and/or days of the week you are interested in. (Try to be flexible with this, since we use a lot of volunteer student labor, and we can’t always expect that they will be available.)
What kind of group you’re bringing (e.g. an elementary school class, a troop of Scouts, a home-school group).
How many kids and how many total people would be coming.
Who the contact person in your group would be, and their phone number. (We need this to coordinate last-minute go/no-go decisions in case of bad weather.)
Whether you can make a donation to the observatory. (Our budget is almost entirely reliant on donations, since we get basically zero operating budget from UCF, so for us to do private events above-and-beyond are public outreach load, it really helps to receive a donation. We can give you a suggestion for this, if that helps.)

At the event, we will have telescopes set up on the lawn and knowledgeable staff members there to explain what they are pointed at. Over the course of the event we can also give you a tour of the 20-inch telescope that’s upstairs in our observatory building. We also have meteorites — actual rocks from space! — that we can show.

I’d really like for your team to come to my location and do an event, do you do that?

Yes! Send us an email with the following info:

Where you would need us to travel to.
Whether you are interested in a daytime or a nighttime event. (Note that a daytime event will have WAY fewer things to see in the sky, because it’s, you know, daytime…. Also, it will be much, much harder for us to accommodate a daytime event, since we all have day jobs.)
What dates and/or days of the week you are interested in. (Try to be flexible with this, since we use a lot of volunteer student labor, and we can’t always expect that they will be available.)
What kind of audience the group is (e.g. an elementary school class, a troop of Scouts, a home-school group).
How many kids and how many total people would be participating.
Who the contact person in your group would be, and their phone number. (We need this to coordinate last-minute go/no-go decisions in case of bad weather.)
Whether you can make a donation to the observatory. (Our budget is almost entirely reliant on donations, since we get basically zero operating budget from UCF, so for us to do private events above-and-beyond are public outreach load, it really helps to receive a donation. We can give you a suggestion for this, if that helps.)

For your event, we can bring our telescopes and set them up. It would be great if you had a flat, open area that is relatively far away from lights. If you can turn off any nearby lights, even better. It doesn’t have to be perfectly dark (especially since general light pollution from Orlando is pretty terrible anyway), but some darkness really helps. We will have staff members with the telescopes to explain what they are pointed at. Over the course of the event we can also repoint the telescopes at different objects.

I bought a star from the International Star Registry [or similar company] for someone, or received one as a gift. Can you help me find the star with your telescope?

Yes, possibly. Send us whatever your information you have about your star (e.g. coordinates (with equinox if you have it), starchart, magnitude, etc.) and we can assess whether or not your star would be visible at all (many stars are just too faint or never rise far above the horizon) and whether or not your star would be visible during an evening when we have a public event. If the star is visible we might be able to show it to you. Just keep in mind that if our event is very busy, we may not be able to divert a telescope to your star.

I want to a buy a star from the International Star Registry [or similar company] in honor of someone special to me; is that company legitimate?

There are many wonderful, moving, and sincere reasons for someone to want to make a connection between the night sky and someone special. And if it means you become more interested in astronomy and in the night sky, that’s great! It is just good to know what the context is. Some info about the star sellers is here and here.

What are your hours of operation?

We are only open for public events roughly 7 times per semester. See our public event schedule.

Are you going to be open tonight for your scheduled public event?

Maybe! 🙂 As you probably know, in Florida it can be difficult to predict whether the clouds will be minimal “enough” by the early evening. The vast majority of afternoons in central Florida are partly cloudy, so it can be hard to assess if the clouds will actually dissipate by the time early evening rolls around. In the interest of caution, we wait until the mid-afternoon to give the go/no-go decision so we minimize the chance that we wind up being open during an evening when the sky is too cloudy. Please do not call the Physics Department to ask if we will be open; they will never know the answer to that. The only way to be sure if we will be open is to wait for the confirmation on the website, or follow us on social media.

I’d like to buy a telescope. Can you give me advice?

Yes, but with the caveat that this is just one person’s opinion, and you can find many other guides online about this question. For example, check out this, this, this, this, and this from the highly-reputable magazine Sky & Telescope.

Anyway, in our opinion, here are some things to consider:

Where do you live? Is there a lot of light pollution, or do you live somewhere dark? If it’s some place in town, are you going to drive out someplace dark every time you want to use the telescope? Considerations: Is the telescope you want overkill for the crummy, light-polluted sky you’re under? Is the telescope you want so heavy that you’ll never want to haul it around?
Are you mainly interested in just the Moon, the planets, and a few star clusters? Or are you really interested in hunting for faint galaxies and nebulas? Considerations: Smaller telescopes do a great job on bright things. You’ll need bigger telescopes to see fainter stuff, but that can only happen if you’re someplace dark in the first place.
Are you just starting out in this hobby, or are you sure that it’s going to be something you’ll be doing a lot? Considerations: Binoculars are a great way to start out without spending a lot of money, plus they force you to learn the sky. And if you wind up not so enthused about the night sky, it’s OK, not much money lost and binocs are useful for lots of non-astronomy things too.
Are you thinking about the artistry of astrophotography? Or just eyepiece viewing? Considerations: Getting good photographs through a telescope takes a lot of equipment, it’s a very expensive hobby and takes a lot of practice/skill to get right, including knowing how to play with software.
How do you like humidity? Do you know how many bugs come out in a Florida summer night, and how little it cools off? Are you planning on doing most of your stargazing during the summertime? Considerations: Ask yourself just how much you will use the telescope over the course of the year during our different seasons. Our humidity means that often equipment gets very, very dewy at night, so you might have to fork out for anti-dew devices. Some telescope designs will take longer to equilibrate, so even on chilly nights in the winter you might be waiting a bit longer to get the absolute sharpest views.

To give you some perspective, at Robinson Observatory we have Meade LX90-ACF 8-inch telescopes, and with all the accoutrements (tripod, eyepieces, other tiny parts) the package runs about $2,500. They are great telescopes, but honestly they are a little underutilized from our location on the UCF campus because of light pollution. On a great night during a KUTS public event, we can see max about 2 or 3 galaxies, that’s it. (Though we do get great views of the Moon and the planets.) If there were no other considerations, we could find telescopes for probably about half that price that do most of what we need them to do for our public events.

I found a cool rock [or, I have a meteorite]! Can you confirm for me that it’s a meteorite?

Yes, we can help you! But first, please visit this flowchart. If you do get through that flowchart and still think you’ve got a meteorite, then send us some well-focussed and well-illuminated photos of the rock and some info based on the flowchart about why you think you have a meteorite. If the flowchart indicates that you don’t have a meteorite, you can still send us mail, but keep in mind that the vast majority of rocks are not meteorites.

How come you don’t have any public or private events over the summer?

There are basically two reasons: (1) volunteer personnel and (2) weather. Regarding (1): for our events, we rely on the volunteer effort of many UCF undergrads and grad students. During the summer — which, by the way, for UCF, lasts from mid-May to mid-August — those students are often away from school. So we can’t be sure that we’d have enough people to actually hold an event. Regarding (2): summer is just often too cloudy, too rainy, too buggy, or too humid to have a pleasant outdoor nighttime experience. Also such conditions can be harsh on our telescope equipment. So it is best to assume that there will be no public or private events possible during the months of May, June, July, and August.
However if a particularly exciting astronomical event happens during the summer, we will try to have an event. In that case, we will announce it on our webpage and social media.