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, April 16, 2016, weather permitting.
At 1:00PM until 5:30 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 safely view the sun, observing sunspots as well as solar flares and prominences that can extend half a million miles into space. The Moon with amazing craters, mountains and lava basins, will be also be viewed throughout the afternoon and well into the evening. Daylight viewing of the planet Venus will be attempted by some of the telescopes.

Later, at about 7:30PM, as night falls, more than twenty large telescopes will permit public viewing; Venus will be visible for evening viewing in the western sky. The moon will also be prime for viewing. Jupiter, with its cloud bands and its moons will also be visible overhead from the Town Hall lawn. If conditions allow, some telescopes will be viewing deep space objects such as a star clusters such as the “Beehive” (AKA M44), brighter nebulae, such as The great Orion Nebula or a distant galaxy such as the Andromeda Galaxy. Many other objects may be visible depending on sky conditions.

Barrington’s Astronomy Day has grown in recent years and is probably Rhode Island’s largest ongoing astronomy event. Previous Astronomy Days drew more than 200 daytime visitors and over 1,000 at night. 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.

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.”

For more information about The Astronomical Society of Southern New England, check online at http://www.assne.org/.