54th Annual Moon Viewing Concert - Virtual
The annual Moon Viewing concert is a tradition that was begun by Natalie Hays Hammond in 1966 and has continued by popular demand ever since.
Although you will not be able to be in the Japanese Stroll Garden for this ancient custom, which every year brings together people and traditions of the East and the West, we have created a special night version of the garden with the musicians.
The evening will begin with a tea ceremony performed by tea master
Yasuko Hara followed by a night view of the sky over the Hammond and music that has been specially pre-recorded for the Hammond by Masayo Ishigure.
It will include 2 kotos and 2 shamisens.
We encourage you to provide your own bento boxes and sake or plum wine to enjoy in the comfort of your own home while listening to the concert.
Tea Ceremony
Annual Moon Viewing
Virtual Planetarium Show
Hammond Garden at Night
The garden is open once a year at night for Otsukimi/Moon Viewing. The Stellarium program does a superb job of displaying the sky as one would see it in a planetarium. One can also zoom in on objects in the sky for a closer view. One of the garden panoramas has been made into a landscape to use with Stellarium so the sky is displayed above the Hammond garden. Unfortunately, the web version of Stellarium does not allow loading of custom landscapes so Stellarium must be downloaded into your computer and then the Hammond landscape installed into the copy of Stellarium you run on your own computer. The zipped file HamStell.zip contains detailed instructions for loading the Hammond Landscape folder (HammondSummer.zip) into Stellarium.
Our most recent Otsukimi was August 10, 2019, and we would have held Otsukimi on September 26 in 2020.
Other astronomical spectacles: Total Solar Eclipse at the Hammond: 9:13 AM, January 24, 1925; Lunar Eclipse: May 15 and 16, 2022; Transit of Mercury: 11/11/2019 and 5/9/2016; Transit of Venus: 6/6/2012 and 6/8/2004. The International Space Station and other satellites can be spotted as they pass by. The trees that obstruct the view of the total eclipse weren't there in 1925 so it's fair to turn off the landscape to see the solar corona during the total eclipse.
DOWNLOAD OF HAMSTELL.ZIP (14mb)
PROUD TO BE SUPPORTED BY
ARTSWESTCHESTER
WESTCHESTER COUNTY GOVERNMENT
J.C.C. Fund, Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of New York