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The pub is in the centre of the Historic village of Lacock, location for many film and television productions including "Pride and Prejudice", "The Other Bolyn Girl", "Moll Flanders", "Cranford" and two of the "Harry Potter" movies.
In being relatively unchanged since the 19th century, it is blessed with almost no street lighting, making it an exceptional dark site. The pub has plenty
of parking and a good selection of food and beers including Wadworth's
6X.
Viewing
evenings are normally on the 4th Friday of the month between
September and May, unless a full Moon (click link or scroll to the bottom of the page) or poor seeing (see link at bottom of the page) gets in the way, in which
case we will move the meeting to the 3rd Friday. As this is
confirmed by members at the monthly meeting watch this web site for
updates. These sessions are open for members and non members.
We
also will hold special viewing evenings for meteor showers and rare
events (such as the transit of Venus, comet appearances or eclipses), as well as solar viewing (see bottom of page for latest Solar views from SOHO).
During Christmas to New Year we like to hold an early evening
session (starting at 6 to 6.30pm) for families and to help new
instrument users to set up their equipment.
We normally start
observing at around 8pm in the winter. The summer evenings can
be pleasantly spent sitting in the pub gardens until dark. The
society owns an 8 inch Newtonian Refractor and a 4.5 inch Celestron
GoTo (computer guided) telescope. These are available for loan
to members on a monthly basis.
Members own a large variety of instruments and
as many as possible are brought along to observing sessions. We
welcome visitors and are always happy to help and encourage
beginners. If you decide to become a member of the society
you're not 'expected' to own a telescope.
Much can be learned
from naked eye observing and a sound pair of binoculars can
reveal a great deal. If you do choose to invest in a telescope,
there's a bewildering range of equipment on offer. Digital
technology has revolutionised amateur astronomy and allows just
about anyone to achieve observing and imaging results undreamt of
just a few years ago.
If you'd like
to know more about the equipment available to the amateur, check out some
of the supplier websites listed on our Astro Links page,
or visit the MC2 Astro Shop website.
The Current Lunar Phase is shown below
(Flash should be installed to view this)
Current Solar Activity shown below
(SOHO Image) 
To get the current weather seeing and weather information for Wiltshire, click on this link to visit the met office latest satellite images
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