SOCIETY in focus
www.classroominspace.org.uk Phillip John, Assistant Treasurer, Swansea Astronomical Society
Swansea Astronomical Society’s biggest outreach is through our star parties. At present we use three venues: the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, the National Botanical Gardens of Wales in Carmarthenshire and Swansea Airport. Yes, I did say Swansea Airport – I’ll come back to that in a moment.
The first two make good venues because of their locations and facilities. They offer excellent outdoor space for observation as well as indoor areas for talks, shows and telescope clinics… as well as somewhere to retreat to if conditions are cloudy or wet. This brings us to our third and most unlikely venue: Swansea Airport.
Opened as RAF Fairwood Common in 1941, the airport was the base for Hawker Hurricane day fighter squadrons along
with a night fighter squadron of Bristol Beaufighters for the duration of World War II. Since its decommissioning in 1949 it has had a chequered life. It has seen regular passenger services to Jersey, been host to a number of historical aircraft and also been home to a squadron of the Air Cadets Gliding School. There is no night flying nowadays, which would have prevented us using the site, but it is used by both the Swansea Skydiving Club and Cambrian Flying Club.
The site is extremely dark as it’s located on the Gower Peninsular, Britain’s first designated Area of Outstanding Beauty. Most of the surrounding land is also a Special Area of Conservation.
Though the airport has accessible toilets it does not currently have any refreshment facilities apart from a vending machine. There is a café but we use this for our talks, while the waiting area and corridors are used for displays and our telescope clinic. Recent cancellations of our events at the venue – as happened in March this year – are making us reconsider its suitability for future star parties, but we will have to wait and see. Watch this space!