Upcoming Events

Watercolor painted image of Saturn
Closest approach of Saturn in 2026

📅 Sunday, October 4th | ⏰ 1:15 a.m. - 1:45 a.m. | Free Admission

Celebrate Saturn at its closest approach of 2026 with a special night of telescope viewing at the observatory. During this time, the ringed planet reaches its minimum distance from Earth for the year—about 784 million miles (1.26 billion km) away—making it one of the best opportunities to see it clearly through our telescopes.

Weather permitting. Clear skies are required for viewing.

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Two men talking over a a snake enclosure
Reptile Revue

1st & 3rd Tuesdays | 6 PM – 7 PM | FREE

Get up close and personal with some of the coolest cold-blooded residents of the Herrett Center! Reptile Revue happens twice a month and gives you the chance to meet our fascinating reptiles, learn fun facts, and even interact with them in a safe and educational setting.

Upcoming Reptile Revue Events:

October 6th and October 20th

November 3rd and November 17th

Image of a telescope looking at Mars
Monthly Free Star Party

📅 Saturday, October 10th | ⏰ 8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. | Free Admission

Join us in the Centennial Observatory for our Monthly Free Star Party and your chance to see:

  • Double/multiple stars
  • Neptune
  • Saturn (after 8:19 PM)
  • Deep-sky targets (star clusters, nebulae, galaxies) after end of twilight (8:37 PM)
  • Moonless sky

Weather permitting. Clear skies are required for viewing.

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Image of Jared Talley
Herrett Forum Lecutre

📅 Tuesday, October 13th | ⏰ 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. | Free Admission

Public Lands as America's Strangest Civic Institution

Join Jared Talley in a Herrett Forum Lecture. We tend to imagine public lands as the places agriculture never reached. In reality, public lands are the product of an agricultural vision for the West that never fully succeeded. This talk explores how agriculture shaped the public lands we inherited, why farming and ranching remain central to what public lands mean, and how they became one of America's strangest civic institutions: land that belongs to all of us and to none of us at once.

Herrett Forum Schedule

Field Trips and Group Tours

Field trips and educational group events are welcome! Choose from our tour options or request a custom theme when you book a field trip.

 

Accessibility

The Herrett Center for Arts & Science is committed to making our collections, building, programing, and services accessible to all audiences.

Open Caption is available for most Faulkner Planetarium Shows. To request this service, please let the cashier at the front desk know when purchasing tickets.

The Centennial Observatory features one of the world’s largest fully wheelchair-accessible public telescopes. An elevator takes visitors up to the observatory space, once there, a wheelchair elevator is available to take visitors with limited mobility to the observatory deck. The ARE-125, an optical “periscope” designed by DFM, allows unprecedented access to the telescope for wheelchair-bound or limited-mobility visitors.

For questions concerning accessibility prior to your visit, please call the Herrett Center front desk at 208-732-6655.

Inside Map of the Herrett Center

floorplan map