The Cornell Astronomical Society & Fuertes Observatory

Home
United States
Ithaca, NY
The Cornell Astronomical Society & Fuertes Observatory

Open on Fridays 8 PM - midnight, run by CAS, a registered student organization of Cornell University.

Primarily run by undergraduates at Cornell University, the Cornell Astronomical Society serves the community by providing guided tours of the night sky and Fuertes Observatory, as well as hosting lectures and other astronomy outreach events. Located on Cornell's North Campus, the charmingly antiquated observatory offers visitors a chance to gaze through a circa 1922 large refracting telescope while learning about astronomy from our knowledgeable guides.

04/14/2026

This Friday is our FINAL lecture of the semester! Interested in the search for alien life and what it actually takes to find another Earth? Join us as Aiden Zelakiewicz explores NASA’s efforts to hunt for Earth 2.0.

📍 7 PM in Appel 303
Join in person or via Zoom! (link in our bio or at cornellastrosociety.org/lecture-series)

All lectures are free and open to the public!

04/04/2026

Yuri's Night is one week out!

Join us as we celebrate humanity's first journey into space, and all the advancements that came after!

Free food and refreshments will be provided along with custom stickers, and the evening will feature a special lecture on some of the newest space exploration efforts.

Register now - CampusGroups link can be found in our bio. Don't miss out! 🚀

03/30/2026

YURI’S NIGHT CELEBRATION - April 10

Register now: CampusGroups link can be found in our bio!

Join us as we celebrate humanity’s first journey to space at our Yuri’s Night celebration. The evening will feature a special lecture on laser sailing and Cornell’s Alpha CubeSat mission by Joshua Umansky-Castro.

Free food, refreshments, and stickers will be provided. We hope to see you there!

All lectures are free and open to the public

Art credit: Abigail Bohl

03/25/2026

Thank you to everyone who entered our Yuri’s Night sticker design contest, and a big congratulations to our winning artist Winnie Chen!

Winnie’s design (first photo) will be made into a sticker to be handed out for free at our Yuri’s Night lecture on Friday April 10th at 7:00pm. (Register at the link in our bio!) We hope to see you there!

03/10/2026

Interested in biology and space? Come stop by our third lecture of the semester this Friday! This lecture will be given by Professor Rosa Santomartino on space microbiology.

Microbes have a very bad reputation, as we often associate them with diseases, dirt, and even pandemics. In reality, these tiny organisms are often useful, if not essential, for our survival on Earth and beyond. In this lecture, we will explore how harnessing the power of microorganisms could support human space exploration, and what benefits this could bring to Earth as well.

📍7 PM in Appel 303
Join in person or via Zoom! (link in our bio or at cornellastrosociety.org/lecture-series)

All lectures are free and open to the public!

03/05/2026

For our Yuri’s Night celebration on April 10th, we are running a CAS sticker design contest! The winning design (and possibly a few runner-ups) will be turned into stickers that will be handed out at the event.

Yuri’s Night is an international celebration of space exploration marking Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight in 1961. Your design can be anything space-themed that captures the spirit of exploration. All levels of artistic experience are welcome- we’d love to see submissions from everyone!

🔗 Please submit your design no later than March 15th, the submission form can be found in our bio

All submission guidelines and details can be found in the form 🚀

03/04/2026

THIS FRIDAY - Our second installment of the Spring 2026 lecture series will be given by Lydia Guertin, a NANOGrav member and Astronomy PhD student here at Cornell! Come to learn more about gravitational wave astronomy!

Pulsar timing arrays have recently opened a new window of gravitational wave astronomy—the low-frequency domain, where the interactions of supermassive black holes dominate. Lydia Guertin will walk through what led to this multi-decadal breakthrough scientific endeavor, and what gravitational wave sources we can hear now.

📍7 PM in Appel 303
Join in person or via Zoom! (link in our bio or at cornellastrosociety.org/lecture-series)

All lectures are free and open to the public, we hope to see you there!

02/25/2026

THIS FRIDAY - The spring semester's Lecture Series has begun! Please join us in welcoming Professor Anna Ho as our first speaker this semester.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Corning Museum of Glass. Corning Glass Works has been responsible for making the mirrors for many of the world's foremost astronomical telescopes. Professor Ho will share her firsthand experiences using one of those telescopes—the Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar—and how it is still a valuable tool for astronomers after more than 70 years in service.

📍7 PM in Appel 303
Join in person or via Zoom! (link in our bio or at cornellastrosociety.org/lecture-series)

All lectures are free and open to the public, we hope to see you there! 🔭

02/04/2026

Hello astronomers, we hope you have had a great start to the year!

As things begin to ramp up, we'd like to remind you all that Fuertes Observatory remains open to the public every Friday from 8pm to midnight. Though our building is heated, the dome stays quite cold, so please bring a jacket!

Additionally, our lecture series will be kicking off for the semester late February! These lectures are free and open to the public, and are a great chance to learn about current research and discoveries across a variety of fields. The schedule for these lectures can be found on our website under "Events"

Clear skies, and stay warm! ❄️🌌

11/20/2025

THIS FRIDAY - The final installment of the fall semester's lecture series will be led by three of our very own CAS members! Please join us in welcoming Abigail Bohl, Haonan Gong, and Ella Mansfield as they tell us about some of their research over the past year!

Topics will explore the use of machine-learning methods to investigate the spectra of supermassive black holes, the development of software to turn the Haystack 37-meter telescope into a multi-user system, and the study of whether volcanic eruptions on Jupiter's moon Io are influenced by tidal forces.

📍7 PM in Appel 303
Join in person or via Zoom! (link in our bio or at cornellastrosociety.org/lecture-series)

All lectures are free and open to the public, we hope to see you there! 🔭

11/15/2025

Last Friday, we celebrated Carl Sagan’s 91st birthday with a special lecture from Gillis Lowry on The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth (plus plenty of apple cider and apple pie to go around! 🥧)

We'd like to thank everyone who joined us and brought their questions and enthusiasm towards science and Carl Sagan!

A recording of the lecture can be found on our youtube channel and lecture series page (link in bio)

We hope everyone had a great time, and we will see you soon! 🌌

Address

Fuertes Observatory
Ithaca, NY
14853

Opening Hours

8pm - 12am

Telephone

+16072553557

Website

http://www.cornellastrosociety.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Cornell Astronomical Society & Fuertes Observatory posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Want your museum to be the top-listed Museum in Ithaca?