Public Outreach Events in May and June

Family Astronomy Night at Hammonasset, Saturday May 11

By Jim Mazur

Under mostly overcast skies, about 100 people showed up for this event. We had a scaled solar system walk that extended for about 476 yards through the park to show the relative sizes and distances from the Sun to Pluto. As it was getting dark, Laurie Averill led a group of about 50 children and adults along the planet walk. It was especially fun for the children to show their knowledge of the solar system and to hunt in the dark for the next planet in the line, lit by a small LED light. Later, other families took the planet walk on their own.

There were enough breaks in the clouds to show most people the crescent Moon, but no other objects were visible. Despite the poor viewing conditions, it seems that people had a good time. Many had seen the aurora on the night before, and they were excited to talk about what they saw. Many had amazing pictures of the aurora that they obtained with ordinary cell phones, handheld! People were also eager to talk about their experiences from April’s solar eclipse. So this evening included a lot of learning about astronomy and many good discussions about everyone’s recent skywatching experiences.

Meteorites Presented to Third Graders

By Al Washburn

On Tuesday, May 15, 2024, the ASNH meteorite collection was presented to the East Haven Ferrara School’s third grade classes. My granddaughter, Zoey, is in one of the classes. We learned what meteorites are and where they come from. We all made craters in a meteor drop box and then learned the three different kinds and how to identify the metal meteorites by testing the 10 samples with a magnet and recording the data.

Other Public Observing Nights

By Donna Pursley

Silver Sands, May 24
This was one for the record books. I lost count of how many people were there after the first couple of hundred!!  When we arrived at 7:30, the parking lot was filled! Maybe it was the recent events such as the solar eclipse and the northern lights that gave people an interest in looking at the stars. Maybe it was because it was a holiday weekend at a State Park beach on a beautiful day. Whatever the reason for the crowd, the few scopes that we had were quickly overwhelmed. Add to that, there were no planets and no Moon to look at. The lines were incredibly long and some people probably didn’t even get a chance to look through a scope (they all wanted to look through the big scope). Every time I looked up there were more cars coming in. I could barely see how many scopes were there; I think 5 or 6. In the daylight before viewing I was able to talk to a few teens who were very interested in pursuing astronomy for their future. I wish we could have spent more time with them. Hopefully they will come back for the next event. Most people said that they had never looked through a scope before. We like to have a nice turnout for our public events but this took us by surprise and was way more then we could handle.

Young’s Park, May 25
Now back to normal. We only had 3 scopes set up for our Young’s Park event. The sky was about 50% clouds but there were enough holes to see some things. Both the Milford night and tonight weren’t the clearest. There were a few dozen people. Probably some of the dog owners stayed late. We were able to spend more time and explain more about what we were looking at with the attendees. We were able to move the scopes to different objects that popped up in the holes between the clouds. Even though there were a lot less people, I think this is more like what we like to have for our public viewing events, when we can spend time to encourage the love for astronomy.

Cold Spring Farm, June 1
They had us set up in the back field this time. We had a line of a few scopes and there was a line of people sitting in chairs waiting for us. It seemed to take forever to get dark. This is a nice dark sky site, but the sky doesn’t get dark until later in the night in June. We showed them what we could and they quietly left. It turned out to be an earlier night than usual for this location. There were also a lot fewer people than we usually have here.

Silver Sands, June 7
When we showed up it was still bright and the Sun was just setting. Just as I finished setting up, the wind picked up. There were some pretty good wind gusts for the next half hour or so. We were just missing a line of storms that were going across the state to the north. But we didn’t miss the clouds. It was mostly cloudy with no holes. The only thing that we were able to see was the setting crescent Moon at about 1 ½ days old. It was so close to the horizon and so thin that you needed a higher power to see any detail. The sunset was beautiful. We had a few dozen people show up and try to see something but the sky did not cooperate. Just as we started packing up at 10, there were a few holes and we could see a couple of stars poking through. It always seems to happen this way.

Young’s Park, June 8
It is getting close to the solstice so the Sun sets very late. At around 8:30 we had 12 scopes!!!  It was a great turnout as there was a nice selection of many different kinds of scopes. I was thinking we were going to have more scopes than visitors. When it started getting dark, more people showed up and we were able to show a thin crescent Moon. Many of those that attended were at the clouded-out event at Silver Sands the previous night. It was a clear night, but it wasn’t all the way dark yet. We were still able to see many deep sky objects. A bright satellite was seen and thanks to a Yale student, it was identified as the Chinese Space Station. A successful last night of public observing for a few months.