Space Place is located at 2300 S. Park Street in the Village on Park Street, which is just north of the Beltline Highway.
Space Place is the education and public outreach center of the UW-Madison Astronomy Department.
Upcoming Events
Saturday Science Workshop
Science Saturdays are on summer break. Please check again here in the fall, and subscribe to our emailing list for further notifications.
Saturday workshops are always free and open to the public and are offered during the school year. This program is held in person only and is for children ages 6-10 and their families. The workshop starts promptly at 10:00 and is typically over by 11:00.
Guest Presentations
UW Space Place guest presentations will be on hiatus over the summer. Please check with us as fall approaches for upcoming events, and sign up to receive our email announcements at the link above.
Space Place guest presentations are always free and open to the public and are offered live on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 7:00 p.m. These programs are presented both virtually and in person. To watch virtually, please look for the UWSpacePlace channel on YouTube. Many previous talks are archived for you there as well.
Click on 'Guest Presentations' above to listen to May's talk by Kelly Tyrrell and Jim Lattis.
Star Gazing
Other opportunities for Star Gazing
Washburn Observatory
The observatory is open again for public viewing.
Universe in the Park
For the current Universe in the Park schedule, see Partner Programs at badgertalks.wisc.edu
Featured Astronomical Event
Total Lunar Eclipse, 13-14 March
For Wisconsin sky watchers, our only good eclipse of 2025 will be a lunar eclipse, when the full moon moves through Earth's shadow, in mid-March. It will begin late in the evening of Thursday, 13 March, and extend into the early morning hours of Friday the 14th. The middle, and deepest, moment of the eclipse will occur at about 2:00 am on Friday morning. Any night owls lucky enough to have a clear sky might want to take a look. Details below.
Penumbral phase (difficult to see) of eclipse begins 10:57 pm CDT.
Umbral eclipse (easy to see) begins 12:09 am CDT on 14 March
Mid-eclipse at 1:59 am CDT
Umbral eclipse ends 3:48 am CDT
Penumbral ends 5:01 am CDT
Two weeks after the lunar eclipse, the conjugate partial solar eclipse will occur early on the morning of 29 March. Although visible for some North Americans in the extreme northeast of the US and Canada, it will not be visible in Wisconsin or the rest of the country. It will be visible in Greenland, the north Atlantic, and western Europe. There won't be much excitement about it because it is a partial solar eclipse.