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Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­’s astronomy and astrophysics program is the first of its kind. Building on that tradition of leadership, today we have one of the largest astronomy programs in the United States in terms of bachelor’s degrees awarded annually—and one of the strongest, in terms of academic and research excellence.

Your classwork is only the beginning. Our students have monitored the Deep Impact Mission’s collision at Kitt Peak National Observatory, worked with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory and helped develop and test new night-vision optics used by the U.S. Army.

Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ is a founding institution and member of the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA), which operates automated one-meter-class telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile and at a facility on the Canary Islands. All are accessed and controlled remotely over the internet.

Small class sizes, with a low student-to-faculty ratio, guarantee one-on-one attention from your professors. Professors strongly encourage students to participate in research projects to gain hands-on observations with our telescopes or work with data from space-based observatories, such as the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes.

Through their research, our internationally recognized faculty study black holes, space plasma, supernovae, active galaxies, exoplanets and stars. Exploring fascinating topics from solar energetic particles to extragalactic astrophysics, they are experts in their fields.

Our 130-acre campus is located on the Space Coast, also home to NASA-Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral just north of us. Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­’s connections to world-leading aerospace companies such as Northrop Grumman Corp., Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and L3Harris Technologies Inc. allow our students to form valuable networks that lead to future career opportunities.

We’re in Florida’s "High-Tech Corridor" in Melbourne, with numerous high-tech corporations and government and military organizations that provide a variety of internship and employment opportunities located nearby.

There’s also fun to be had in the universe a little closer to home: Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»­ is just minutes from the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian River Lagoon and 72 miles of beautiful beaches, and a short trip to the Florida Keys or the Orlando theme parks. And we have a rich campus life that includes intramural and , .