Recent ASNH Outreach Events, continued:
Silver Sands State Park, Friday May 19
It was another night of Mother Nature not cooperating. It was partly cloudy when we set up our scopes. People starting showing up as it began to get dark. Most of the people said this was their first time coming to a stargazing event. Many lived close by. For a while, we were all able to see Venus, and only Venus.
Because only Venus was visible early on, an enthusiastic pair of children (a young boy and his younger sister) got a chance to try using a 10-inch Dobsonian scope for themselves. They took turns looking through the Telrad to line up Venus in the red bullseye, then they climbed a small stepladder to look through the eyepiece and were delighted to see Venus! It was a great learning experience for them.
Then the clouds really started moving in. Many people went home. Just when we were about to call it a night, at about 9:15, the clouds started moving away. The sky became clear, though a little hazy. The larger scopes were able to find a number of deep sky objects. We were all treated to a Starlink train!! It traveled across the sky for a few minutes. There was also a sighting of the ISS earlier in the evening. We stayed a little late and the last of us were leaving by 10:30. We had a nice crowd so it was too bad that the sky didn’t clear up a little earlier. Hopefully most of the people that left early will stop by for our next event in June.
Hammonasset Beach State Park, Saturday May 27
Members of ASNH and the Thames Amateur Astronomical Society (TAAS) participated in this event. About 100 visitors came to look through the telescopes. Highlights of the evening included the first quarter Moon, Venus (also half-lit like the Moon, and Mars. Some of the deep-sky targets included Mizar and Alcor, Epsilon Lyra, the Ring Nebula, the Hercules Cluster, and galaxies M81 and M82.
Young’s Park, Saturday June 10
After the last two scheduled events here had been canceled due to clouds, we finally got to hold an observing session at Young’s Park. We had about 8 telescopes set up and about 40-50 visitors on a comfortable June evening. Many of the visitors were very enthusiastic about looking through the scopes and discussing astronomy, and some stayed for a long time.
