Recent Public Outreach Events

By Donna Pursley

Family Astronomy Night at Hammonasset, June 5, 2026

On June 5th we hosted a Family Astronomy Night at Meigs Point in Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison along with the Shoreline Astronomical Society and the Thames Amateur Astronomical Society. There were on and off clouds and because of this the crowd was smaller than usual, but we still had about 100 people in attendance and 18 telescopes. The smaller crowd was actually a good thing because we were able to spend more time with each group. And we were able to swing our scopes to more objects. The problem was finding something to see. In June, the Sun sets very late so it didn’t really get really dark. When it did get darker, there were more clouds. Considering that it was a late event, I saw more children than I expected. Everyone was eager to look through the scopes. We packed up and were ready to leave when we looked up and saw a sky full of stars. Happens every time.

Youngs Park, June 13, 2026

It was a beautiful cloudless day. Hot, but not humid. The forecast was for a beautiful moonless, cloudless night. But….   When we started setting up at Youngs Park, there were puffy clouds. We were able to show Jupiter with its moons and Venus. Mercury was too low. As it became dark the puffy clouds become streaky bands of clouds. We were able to find a few good objects to show the few brave souls that came out to brave the mosquitos. There were 6 scopes and maybe 20 people. There was one boy who wanted to see Stephenson 2-18, a massive red hypergiant star in Scutum. At magnitude 15, I was unable to find it. He has self-taught himself astronomy from YouTube. We packed up around 10:30.