With Hurricanes Helene and Milton damaging our Sarasota and Bradenton locations, we've hosted SSC up in St. Pete virtually every day since October 13th (plus our reopening of Bayfront Park in Sarasota on December 13th with astronomers Chap and Kaya). We've made the street corner up next to the Museum of Fine Arts our home, just one block down from the Pier, and sitting across the street from some of St. Pete's downtown restaurants, SSC quickly became a familiar fixture, with hundreds of passerby and dozens of regulars visiting every night to view Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, the Moon, and now Mars and the Orion Nebula.
Since mid-October, St. Pete has accounted for 47.3% of our entire 2024 visitation. We've now had a 261% increase in visitation from 2023, which saw around 14,400 visitors throughout the entire year.
So with the holidays on the doorstep, we wanted to go one more extra mile: host 24 hours of Sidewalk Astronomy in three days.
Friday, December 20th saw 583 visitors over 6 hours
Saturday, December 21st saw 809 visitors over 12 hours
Sunday, December 22nd saw 771 visitors over 6 hours
Including private events outside the free SSCs in public, we saw 2,320 visitors across those three days. Sunday was so busy, we clicked through 168 people in our first 20 minutes of opening.
Most visitors come during evening hours between 5pm -11pm. We've yet to see a large bump of traffic during daytime astronomy on the corner. Rest assured we are working on developing new incentives and visual appeals to attract higher traffic in the 11am - 3pm range. For the most part, people just don't understand that you can, in fact, use telescopes during the day. In our conversations with others who did, they said they were going to walk by because they thought it was just on display until we told them they could see the Sun and Venus.
We're often asked if we're only here for a short time: no! We have no intention of leaving St. Pete. While we may not be out with telescopes year-round (looking at you, summer...) we also have science experiments and activities that will cover the emptier night sky months. Those activities are typically held in North Straub Park. The location and type of session is always listed on our weekly schedule, found every Monday on Facebook or our newsletter.
The "24 Hours of Sidewalk Astronomy" is a testament to SSC's versatility and reliability. Your donations have supported upgrades to the experience with new signage and banners that allow visitors to explore what you're seeing in the telescopes and develop a better understanding of the history of astronomy. These banners will be a model for all types of public SSC sessions in the coming months, standardizing the experience and creating a smoother, more natural flow for both visitors and educators alike. They will showcase not only astronomy, but other sciences as well: biology, marine, physics, chemistry, engineering, and more. Your support keeps these experiences fresh, engaging, and free forever.
For now, happy holidays. We're taking a break this week for educators to spend time with family and friends and travel as needed. While we do have some private events after the 25th, our next PUBLIC session is Saturday, December 28th from 5-11pm.
We'll see you on the sidewalk.
To all your endeavors,
Alex Martin
Executive Director
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