The Barrington Recreation Department and The Astronomical Society of Southern New England (ASSNE) are co-hosting a FREE day of family fun, education and amazement on Saturday, May 7, 2011, weather permitting.
At 1:30PM until 6:00 PM, about a dozen telescopes specially filtered to allow views of our own star—The Sun—will be set up on the Barrington Town Hall Lawn that borders County Road (RI Route 114). Children accompanied by their parents are welcome to look at sunspots (if they appear, Solar Weather is as unpredictable as Earth weather, but The Sun has been very active this year) and through specialized Hydrogen-Alpha light telescopes to see solar flares and prominences. Daylight viewing of our moon and the planet Venus may also be possible. The moon will be visible during the early evening.
Later, at about 7:30PM, when it is dark enough, more than twenty large telescopes will be set up to permit public viewing of Saturn and its moons, our own Moon - with amazing craters, mountains and lava basins as well as some bright double stars and other astronomical phenomena.
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Barrington’s Astronomy Day has grown in recent years and is probably Rhode Island’s largest ongoing astronomy event. 2007’s Astronomy Day drew about 200 daytime visitors and over 1,000 at night and last year’s event drew almost as many until clouds moved in.
The public is reminded that this is a weather-dependent event and there is no rain date. If it is partly cloudy the event will go on. If it is overcast, or raining, it will not. The public is invited to go to ASSNE’s webpage http://www.assne.org to see if the event has been cancelled. A cancellation notice should appear shortly after noon.
Find out what's happening in Tiverton-Little Comptonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The Astronomical Society of Southern New England is a non-profit association of amateur astronomers who serve Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts with educational outreach programs at schools and local venues as well as public viewing, including Waterfire Providence and operating the observatory at UMass Dartmouth for public nights. The ASSNE motto is: “To Educate and Inspire.”
