Britain’s first purpose-built public observatory, located on the summit of Balgay Hill. Featuring a planetarium, amazing telescopes and a shop.
Dundee, Scotland
Joined June 2013
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Planetary nebula
Cosmic “Crystal Ball” in All Its Glory: Gemini North Telescope Captures Nebula NGC 1514 🔮
Fifteen hundred light-years from Earth, a dying star has cast off its outer layers in a spectacular farewell. The result is NGC 1514 — a glowing planetary nebula that looks like a giant crystal ball suspended in the darkness. Delicate shells of gas expand outward from the star’s remains, illuminated from within and shaped by the forces of its final days.
What was once a quiet stellar life has become a radiant, fleeting masterpiece — a brief cosmic spectacle before the light fades.
Neptune and its rings. Stunning.
Behold the ghostly ice giant: Neptune, glowing like a pale pearl adrift in the dark, its delicate rings razor-sharp for the first time in more than three decades—faint dusty bands that last glinted under Voyager 2’s gaze in 1989 now revealed in infrared by the James Webb Space Telescope. 🔭
Beside it, the captured moon Triton blazes brighter than its planet, a nitrogen-ice mirror reflecting ~70% of the light that hits it, crowned with Webb’s signature diffraction spikes while methane darkens Neptune’s atmosphere and bright methane-ice clouds streak the southern hemisphere.
A frame of cosmic elegance: the distant ice world, its ethereal rings, and its brilliant retrograde moon, captured July 12, 2022.
Our next planetarium shows are scheduled for Friday 6th November. They start at 7, 8 and 9pm. Adults cost £3 and children £1.50. Please call us on 01382 435967 if you would like to book.
We reopened on 1st Oct and despite tonight being rubbish for viewing we have had some decent weather so far this autumn. Long may it continue! Clear skies!
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Incredible dancing "corona" aurora filmed in real-time during an intense geomagnetic storm. Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
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This time-lapse technique that makes you truly feel that it's not the sky that's spinning, but the Earth rotating—it's amazing.
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In the rare case you haven’t seen it yet:
Here is the 10-day trajectory of Artemis II around the Moon and back.
It follows a figure-eight loop around the Moon, reaching over 230,000 miles away from Earth.
Tonight is our last open night of the 2025/2026 winter season. It's been a really wet and windy 6 months with scarce viewing opportunities. Here's hoping for clearer skies for 2026/2027. We will reopen full-time on the 1st October. Thanks to all our visitors and supporters.
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Halley's Comet, as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. The comet was seen over the skies of England in April of 1066
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More than 400 years ago, Galileo Galilei proposed that mass does not affect the speed with which an object falls. Now, using the world's largest vacuum chamber at NASA, we can confirm this fundamental principle of physics. nitter.cf/i/status/2031710479748…
We are delighted to be hosting the UoD's 8th Physics Science Fair @MillsObs on Saturday 21st March from 2:30pm onwards. Amongst the exhibits we'll have "banana keyboard", "magnetic loops" and "fun with fusion". No admission fee, no booking required - just turn up - all welcome.
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⚡️This is the clearest image ever taken of Saturn’s North Pole.
A perfect hexagonal storm is raging for decades now and it is over 30,000km across.
First spotted by Voyager 1 back in 1980s.
📷 NASA
Pluto. Is it a planet or not?
After traveling 9 years and covering 3 billion miles, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft got this shot.
Behold! The icy mountains of Pluto.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The attached video is a 2017 NASA CGI rendering created from New Horizons' 2015 data, with exaggerated topography and enhanced colors. It is not actual footage or the spacecraft's real trajectory during its flyby at ~7,800 miles. The mission details are accurate.
nasa.gov/missions/nasa-…
science.nasa.gov/mission/new-ho…
The mathematics present through our universe never cease to amaze.
