DAYTONA BEACH Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University on Monday installed a $1 million telescope at its Daytona Beach campus, which gives the school bragging rights as home to Florida's largest university research telescope.

Officials hope the 16-foot-tall, 2-ton device will draw more students to the campus and to an astronomy major it plans to start offering later this year.

Embry-Riddle is among the colleges across the state and nation that have expanded astronomy programs as interest has grown in recent years.

Embry-Riddle student Tyler Parsotan, who was among those watching a crane lift the parts of the telescope into a new observatory Monday, said he can't wait to get his hands on the new equipment.

"I am absolutely ecstatic I have never had any type of opportunity like this before," said Parsotan, a junior majoring in space physics.

Embry-Riddle is eager to show off the telescope to the public, too. In the coming months, the private school, which has about 5,000 students in Daytona, will begin inviting community members to peer into space at comets, planets and other objects.

Terry Oswalt, chairman of Embry-Riddle's department of physical sciences, said students and the public will be able to see the surface of Mars, dozens of moons around Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. They can look into the Milky Way as well as the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, which is 25,000 light years away, and the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away.

"There is almost an unlimited number of projects you can do with a telescope of this quality and size," Oswalt said.

Until now, the University of Central Florida claimed to have the biggest telescope open to the public in Florida.

Embry-Riddle's telescope is 40 inches in diameter, meaning that it will collect more light and provide much brighter images than UCF's 20-inch telescope. The Orlando Science Center's main telescope has a 10-inch lens.

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Embry-Riddle reaches for the stars with $1M telescope | Video