The Penn State Eberly College of Science's popular AstroFest program, a longtime outreach event offered by the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, will welcome visitors to Davey Laboratory on the University Park campus from Wednesday, July 8, through Saturday, July 11. The four-night festival of astronomy activities and stargazing will run from 8:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. each night during the 2026 Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. Entering its 27th year, AstroFest will offer visitors of all ages a variety of fun educational activities. The public events are free and will occur rain or shine, both in classrooms and in the planetarium on the fifth floor of Davey Lab, located on Pollock Road across from the HUB-Robeson Center.
In the Davey Lab lobby, visitors can pick up their printed AstroFest program, which can be stamped at the evening's activities and then returned at the end of the night for science-themed prizes. During the first half of each night, activities for kids will take place that are sure to be a hit. On clear nights, visitors will be able to use the rooftop observatory telescopes.
This year's program will bring back many beloved activities, such as the Oobleck kiddie pool and space arts and crafts, as well as introduce new, timely activities and information about ongoing research.
"AstroFest is for all ages and interest levels, and one of the things we enjoy each year is sharing both entry-level activities to spark an interest in space as well as timely space research with our community," said Chris Palma, teaching professor of astronomy and astrophysics. "We're helping to address fundamental questions about the universe while also leading some of today's key advancements in space-related innovation and instrumentation, and AstroFest gives us the opportunity to share this exciting work with our neighbors and friends."
Local leaders of global research
Just last month and for the second year in a row, Penn State was ranked No. 20 in the world (No. 13 nationally) for space science research, according to U.S. News & World Report.
This year's AstroFest will feature several 30-minute talks on the latest in space science advancements, including NASA's Swiftly mission - which launched last Friday (July 3), with mission operations being run out of the Eberly College of Science - and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) - an international collaboration involving Eberly faculty to create the most comprehensive, cinematic record of the Universe in history - that began its 10-year survey last Monday (June 29).
LSST
From a mountaintop in Chile, under clear dark skies, the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory - with longtime scientific and leadership support from Eberly College of Science astronomers dating back to 2005 - officially began its ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time lapse record of the Universe. This survey follows the unveiling of the first images taken from the observatory in summer 2025 with its 3,200-megapixel camera - the largest digital camera in the world - that is now capturing a new, detailed image approximately every 40 seconds in unprecedented detail, transforming the way we study the dynamic Universe.
"Over the next ten years LSST will detect millions of explosive and variable extragalactic objects, including stellar explosions and black holes accreting gas," said Charlotte Ward, Mercedes Richards Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, who has spent several years developing software to model galaxies and variable objects in Rubin observations and will give public talks about the project on Wednesday and Thursday evenings at AstroFest. "With Rubin's exquisite sensitivity and time-domain survey strategy, we will be able to push our understanding of everything from compact object physics to the nature of dark energy."
Swiftly
Running mission operations Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the Eberly College of Science is a key partner in NASA's first mission of its kind to boost the observatory back into orbit so it can continue to collect valuable data. Eberly researchers helped build the observatory 22 years ago and have run mission operations from State College ever since then. Known as NASA's "rapid-response" space telescope, Swift has detected more than 1,760 gamma-ray bursts in its history along with a myriad of other phenomena.
"Its ability to rapidly point in the direction of cosmic events, sometimes on the scale of minutes, and to alert other observatories to follow up, has provided critical information for astronomical breakthroughs," said Michael Siegel, Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope lead and research professor of astronomy and astrophysics. He will present talks about the unique mission and its important implications for the space industry at AstroFest throughout Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Celebrating 27 years
The first AstroFest program, held in 1999, was the brainchild of three then-undergraduate students: Karen Knierman, Jane Rigby, and Nahks Tr'Ehnl. Since that first year, the event has drawn between 1,500 and 2,300 people annually, and more than 45,000 community members have attended the program since its inception.
