Steere Farm Star Party 2024
by Dave Huestis
Steere Farm School, Harrisville
October 11, 2024
By Dave Huestis
It had been 4-5 years since Skyscrapers, Inc., the Amateur Astronomical Society of Rhode Island, had provided a stargazing event for Steere Farm Elementary School in Pascoag, Rhode Island. Bad weather canceled many events, and the pandemic curtailed our activities for a while as well.
But on October 11, we were finally successful in sharing our love of astronomy with the Steere Farm School community.
Mother Nature provided some advance astronomical publicity the night before with a great display of the northern lights, which many of our guests had observed. They thought that perhaps they would be treated to another beautiful display on the 11th. While the aurora did not materialize that evening, about 80 or so students and parents were treated to great views of several objects. We provided many handouts for them to enjoy after the program.
The seeing conditions were not ideal, as a thin haze permeated the sky. However, the waxing gibbous Moon and Saturn certainly wowed our guests.
Skyscrapers’ members provided a wide variety of telescopes in many sizes: 80mm f/6 refractor; 5-inch Celestron reflector; 12.5" f4.8 dob; 4⅛" (105mm) Astroscan; 80 mm eon. Refractor; Celestron NexStar 8SE; SeeStar S50; William Optics Zenithstar 81mm APO: Celestron 80mm zoom spotting scope.
To provide some observational variety, some views were provided of Venus, Alcor and Mizar, the Coathanger cluster and M13.
Some comments to note:
It was the 13th birthday of a young girl who attended with her mom. For her b-day the girl had decided to attend our star party. I should have signed her up as a member immediately!
One young observer described Saturn with its edge on rings as "a snowball with and an icicle stuck through it".
One of the parents took a picture with her phone camera using the eyepiece adapter holder provided by one of our scope operators and was just thrilled. The kids loved the moon and were amazed at the detail.
At the end of the night the PTO/PTA committee were already talking about a future star party due to the favorable comments by the students and parents.
Many thanks to the following Skyscrapers members who supported this successful event: Jim Hendrickson, Francine Jackson, Bob Janus, Chris Harkins, John Kocur, Ron Zincone, Heidi Morgan, Laura Landen, Jim Meltzer, Peter Leveillee and yours truly.
Click on this link to see images posted by Jim Hendrickson: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBMWYz
