Recent ASNH Activities

By Donna Pursley and Jim Mazur

Public Outreach Events for October

Sunday, October 13 was the night of the Madison Moonlight Walk at the Madison Surf Club. ASNH has participated in this event for 25 years, and it is always a nice appreciative crowd. This year about 60 people attended. We were able to look at Jupiter and Saturn, which are always crowd pleasers. The nearly full Moon was a spectacular sight as it rose over the water and dipped in and out of the clouds. Despite the presence of some lights that should have been turned off, some of the larger scopes gave reasonably good views of a few deep sky objects.

On October 18 we had our public star gazing at Silver Sands in Milford. It was cloudy around setup time which probably deterred most from coming out. There were holes in the beginning which allowed for the quick view of some objects. The clouds quickly filled any gaps. The clouds did go away to a cloudless sky for the few observers that braved the cold to come out.

October 19 was our event at Young’s Park in Branford. It was a patchy sky but most visitors were able to see the planets and other deep sky objects. When the public attendance died down, most of us packed up. All except a new couple that kept going. They told of their travels to many dark-sky star parties. As it turns out, this one scope became the focal point for the next hour as we had another experienced visitor show up and the scope was turned to many deep sky objects before we called it a night.

Girl Scout Programs

We had two programs for Girl Scouts this past fall, both on fairly warm Saturday nights. The first one was in Northford on October 5, attended by about 30 scouts and their parents. A week later on October 12, we were at Eisenhower Park in Milford, where there were about 60 girls and their parents. The emphasis in these programs was on the solar system, and each event started with a short presentation about the planets by one of our members. Then we were able to show everyone the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each scout received a packet of goodies including pictures of the planets from NASA, a NASA sticker, an information sheet about the planets, and a glowing bracelet.