St. John's College Observatory St. John's maintains an observatory on the Annapolis campus for use by members of the College community in conjunction with the laboratory and mathematics tutorials. In addition, students are encouraged to work on special projects using the telescopes. Regular, informal stargazing sessions are held after seminars on Monday and Thursday evenings. The facility is also open to the public as astronomical events of general interest arise. Each telescope is set beneath an 8'x10' sliding door.
Field glasses are also available.
The College gratefully acknowledges NSF's generous support for this and other projects. In the past, students have worked on a number of observing projects with the telescopes in the observatory, including measuring the retrograde motion of Mars, the motion of Jupiter's moons, obtaining images of comet Hale-Bopp, and measuring the height of crater walls on the moon using the length of the wall shadows. From time to time, the results from observing projects conducted by students will be featured here. Lunar Images Preliminary image of lunar craters near limb. The Great Nebula in Orion showing Trapezium.