{"id":835505,"date":"2026-09-03T22:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/835505\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T22:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:24:11","slug":"stargazing-at-the-westport-astronomical-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/835505\/","title":{"rendered":"Stargazing at the Westport Astronomical Society"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bgfc.png\" alt=\"Photos Ken Valenti\" class=\"wp-image-100202\" style=\"width:800px;height:auto\"   loading=\"eager\"\/>Photos Ken Valenti<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By Ken Valenti<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"840\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0852-1-840x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-100203 lazyload\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 840px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 840\/1024;width:400px;height:auto\"  data-\/>Finn Larsow \u2013 Photo Ken Valenti<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WESTPORT\u2013When Finn Larsow, 9, peered at the pocked surface of the moon through the Celestron telescope in the Westport Observatory tower near the Merritt Parkway, he made a small discovery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI didn\u2019t know that there were so many craters,\u201d said the New Canaan resident, visiting with his mother, Dr. Tiana Larsow, and his brother Lars, 4.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Larsow had only recently learned of this weekly opportunity to gaze into the heavens to see stars, planets, nebulas and galaxies and more. Yet, it\u2019s there every Wednesday that there\u2019s a clear night, presented by the <a href=\"https:\/\/was-ct.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Westport Astronomical Society<\/a> at 182 Bayberry Lane.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And everyone is invited.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt connects you, in a small way, to the universe,\u201d Dr. Larsow said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The observatory rises 40 feet from the highest point in Westport, which is 269 feet above sea level. The 14-inch diameter telescope is about the largest that an amateur astronomer would buy, saying it cost as much as \u201ca good used car,\u201d said WAS member Keith Smith.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a catadioptric telescope, which is a type of folded telescope that uses mirrors inside to bounce light back and forth, giving it the magnification power of a folded telescope because mirrors inside its tube bounce light back and forth to pack a longer focal lengths into a shorter body.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou can easily see the moons of Jupiter, you can see the rings of Saturn,\u201d Smith said. \u201cYou can see galaxies and nebulas and star clusters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They also own a telescope with a 25-inch mirror that they use from the ground during the public viewings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have the largest telescope that\u2019s available to the public in Connecticut, \u201c said WAS President Shannon Calvert.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition to the Wednesday viewings, the society has welcomed visitors to observe special occurrences through their instruments, such as the launch of the Artemis II mission around the moon in April, and the Transit of Mercury in November 2019, when the solar system\u2019s smallest planet passed between the Earth and the sun.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s far from the only public event the society holds. Every third Thursday of the month, they hold a public lecture on space matters with experts from institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the American Museum of Natural History and Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recent talks have included \u201cSearch for Life in the Universe\u201d by Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester; \u201cCosmic Sound, the Emergence of Structure in the Universe\u201d by Stephon Alexander, director of the Center for Theoretical Physics and Innovation at Brown University; and \u201cThe International Axion Observatory\u201d by Yue Yu, a postdoctoral research scientist in the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyone interested can also watch the talks on Zoom or WAS\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/Was-ctOrg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube channel<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The observatory sits on the 10-acre site that once held a radar tracking tower for Nike Missiles during the Cold War. It includes a seismometer for measuring earthquakes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIf somebody says there\u2019s a 7.2 (magnitude earthquake) in Japan, you\u2019ll see the wiggles here,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The society is made up of some 160 members, Calvert said, including some scientists, but \u201cmostly just local families and residents that are interested in seeing what\u2019s out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Westport Astronomical Society<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">182 Bayberry Lane<br \/>Westport<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2025-08-22-151109-150x150.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-84261 lazyload\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 150px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 150\/150;\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Ken Valenti<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">A career journalist and lifelong resident of the New York City region, Ken Valenti has enjoyed decades of reporting local, regional and national news in New York and Connecticut. Topics of special interest are development, the environment, Long Island Sound and transportation. When not reporting, he\u2019s always on the lookout for the perfect coffee shop or used book sale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photos Ken Valenti By Ken Valenti Finn Larsow \u2013 Photo Ken Valenti WESTPORT\u2013When Finn Larsow, 9, peered at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193,240222],"class_list":["post-835505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-westport-ct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}