Next Members Meeting
Happy 2025 to our members! The January meeting we be an online only meeting using Zoom. The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 7th January 19:15 for 19:30 meeting start.
We’re delighted to welcome Hugh Allen who will be giving a talk on “Spectroscopy”. Please see our newsletter (download link below) for further details.
Regarding access to the Zoom Meeting, please see important annoucement in this month’s newsletter regarding a change that we’re making to the society, the below text is taken from the newsletter “Report from the Chair” section:
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The Wiltshire AS committee is keen to highlight and improve the benefits of joining the society in order to keep membership levels at sustainable numbers to allow the society to continue and grow. Therefore, we will be making the following changes in the next few weeks in order to make things fairer to existing paying members:
Zoom Meeting Access: We will no longer issue the zoom passcode publicly for our monthly members meetings (when held online). Instead, we will send out the specific zoom meeting passcode in an email to current society members for season 2024/2025 and “Life” (Honorary) members. Non-members may still join monthly meetings in order to “try out” the society (see contact page) but we will limit this to a maximum of two meetings before we ask you to kindly take out membership. Please feel free to email see if you are a nonmember and would like access to the passcode to try out our members’ meetings.
Members-only Facebook Group: Likewise, an additional benefit of becoming a member is access to our member community. Currently we use a Private Facebook Group. From the 31st January 2025, only Wiltshire AS members for the current season 2024/2025 will have access to this Facebook group and any non-members of the society will be removed. To continue access to these, please consider joining the society by signing up online. The current season is £16 single adult, £25 family membership and expires 31st August 2025. These changes will not affect the public Facebook page that anyone can follow.
If you have any questions about these changes, please reach out to us, see contact details. I hope you all understand and appreciate the introduction of this change of policy. We want our members to feel they get value from their annual subscription.
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The Zoom meeting ID is provided below:
Join URL: https://zoom.us/j/97874843327
Meeting ID: 978 7484 3327
Passcode: **Emailed seperately to current society members ahead of the meeting**
Non-member access requests: please email the society, see contact page
Newsletter
Once again thanks to Simon Barnes, our chair, for editing the newsletter. Please check out excellent contributions from Peter Chappell, Chris Brooks and Jon Gale. Many thanks for these contributions.
Observing
The latest two observing sessions that were planned in December were both cancelled due to poor weather conditions. Our next scheduled session is Friday 24th January 2025 and is weather dependant. Please keep an eye on the observing page and our mailing list for updates. Also, please download the full observing schedule to see all future dates.
Clear Skies
The Wiltshire AS Team