Stargazing Live - Wiltshire

[NickH]

So...we have a quite epic day planned...

Our location is at the film set for two of the Harry Potter movies in the historic village of Lacock, just outside of Chippenham. Starting at 1:30 local schools will be coming along, with our guides from the BBC, STFC and National Trust to give demos of solar observing in H-Alpha, White Light, and using a Shelyak spectroscope, looking at our nearest star. We then have rocket launches, a planetarium and robotics demonstrations in the Tythe Barn, film set for the "Wolfman", before a night of stargazing and talks, again with the BBC guides, STFC, Nat Trust. An exhibition of astro photographs will be shown in the birthplace of photography, the Fox Talbot museum, which links in to Lacock Abbey (Fox Talbot's home and the Harry Potter filming location). Talks by Dr Helen Walker and me throughout the evening, and indoor demos of equipment with a "newcomers guide to telescopes" from Herschel Museum staff.

It's a great dark location, so if you do "bring a torch" make sure it's a red light one :-)

More info here...

BBC - Things To Do: BBC Stargazing LIVE

Hope to see some of you there..

[S.A.M]

In the evening in the playing field behind the Red Lion pub there will be members from Wiltshire AS, Swindon Stargazers, Salisbury Plain Observing Group and the Herschel Museum with telescopes to show the night sky. These people are there to help out with the BBC event. As NickH said, if you come with a torch, please let it be red as the white ones will affect people's night vision:)

If it is cloudy there will still be things to see indoors.

[S.A.M]

Even though the sky was not clear for our event day/evening at Lacock, the BBC think we had close to 2,500 members of the public turn up and look at the various displays on view. For over five hours, members of the societies involved (Wiltshire AS, Swindon Stargazers, Herschel Museum, Bath Astronomers and Salisbury Plain Observing Group) gave advice about the telescopes on display. I expect we would have had more people turn up if the skies were clear, like they were on Tuesday and Thursday!