Sunday saw the annual Kite Festival in Brooklyn Bridge Park, welcoming kite enthusiasts of all ages to Pier 1. Though the wind was not as strong as a kite festival would wish for, many participants showed off their techniques as best they could. One creative kite was made from old plastic bags.
The event has grown in recent years with more activities like robot building from The Brooklyn Robot Foundry and a DIY kite making table. Genspace, a nonprofit to promote access to scientific labs, attached petri dishes to kites to collect spores and bacteria from the air. They then cultivated the samples and encouraged attendees to check them out under a microscope; Gothamist photographer Sai Mokhtari reported back, "It looked like a giant hairball to me."
Astronomy lovers got a treat, thanks to the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York, which set up a telescope. Festivalgoers could look at the sun with a white light filter, and the group is anticipating lots of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn viewings for the summer (Jupiter is beginning to rise in the east and Venus will be around for another month or so).
Reporting by Sai Mokhtari
