Melton Memorial Observatory

Thank you for reaching out! The observatory is currently open on Monday evenings (weather permitting). Please visit our website (www.uof.sc/melton) for the most current hours and weather updates. Come visit us soon!

Although we do special events from time to time, we currently don't have any events scheduled. The Saturn/Mars conjunction would have been difficult to view from Melton because we have trees blocking the Eastern horizon. We also have buildings to the West, so during the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction in December of 2020 we streamed the event live from the Irmo side of the Lake Murray Dam using one of the portable C8 telescopes we normally set up on the roof. There's a lunar eclipse coming up on May 15th and I'm debating whether or not to host an event from the observatory. The problem is totality occurs at 11:29 PM and ends at 12:53 AM so I don't know how many guests would be willing to visit at that late of an hour. Also, school will be out by then and all my student assistants will be out of town. So right now I'm planning to photograph the event from my home and post the photos on the Melton Facebook page. (Assuming the weather cooperates!) -- Martin Bowers

We returned to receiving guests again during the Fall semester. We will be open tonight (3/21/2022) from 9-11 PM. Our status is updated each Monday AM on our Facebook page.