How to become a "Dark Site" member

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Membership to the East Midlands Stargazers forum is free for everybody. Everybody is welcome at EMS, whether they are a part of our Dark Site premium membership or not.

Becoming a Dark Site member costs the grand sum of £20 per year, to be paid at the beginning of the year by subscription on this forum.

You get access to one other section on this forum called "Darksite members", this tells you about our dark sites and all future EMS meetings.

The Sawley site is basically a patch of hard standing within a field. The plus points are it's quite, safe and secure as it is behind a padlocked gate. The negative points are that we only have two keys so if you want to go you will have to contact a key holder or wait until one of our meetings down there. The site is pretty dark but the power station does loom over you in the background but it does have 360° views.

The Belper site is pretty hard to find and resides at the cricket club. The skies are dark here but it does get very cold as you are up high, so wrap up warm. There is no gate so you can use this site any time you want, but can I ask that if you do go up to the Belper site either let Rusty Strings or myself know incase any local person thinks the cricket club has unwelcome visitors. If you do decide to venture up please stay near to the club house and not onto the cricket pitch. Access to the cricket club itself is closed except for meetings which occur four times a year.

We also have four meetings a year at the cricket club in Belper. What happens here I hear you ask, well normally members give a talk on a astronomy related subject, we sometimes have astro quizes, we use our projector and have a talk on the imaging side of astronomy, and if it's clear members set up their scopes outside and you are very welcome to look through them. There is also refreshments which I think costs £1 for the night.

And lastly we try and sort out an Christmas Dinner in the beginning of December. For the last two years we have had a sit down meal but the venue is pretty small, so if member sizes increase we might have to think about where to have our xmas dinner.

Any non members are allowed one visit to try out the dark sites, and if they want to come again then they have to pay the £20 subscription fee.

As soon as the subscription section is up I'll post a message regarding this.

If you do not want to become a member then thats fine, the forum is free for everyone to use.

Any questions please ask.

Mick