This year's Southwest Astronomy Fair is on Saturday, 7th August 9am to 6pm at the Norman Lockyer Observatory near Sidmouth, Devon.

The SWAF is a well established event celebrating its fifth year bringing visitors from all over the country to an area of outstanding natural beauty.

It provides an opportunity to visit observatorys, attend some excellent lectures by leading astronomers and to view astronomical and related equipment from the various trade stands.

James, Martin and myself will be manning the First Light Optics stand together with Steve Loughran (SteveL) of Steve’s Astro

Hope to see you there





This year's lectures:

Don Kurtz : 'It's about time'
Stuart Clark : 'Twenty big questions in cosmology'
Ian Ridpath : 'Pictures in the sky'
Lucie Green : 'Sun from space'

Planetarium presentations and telescope dome tours take place throughout the day. Car parking and refreshments are available.

The event is suitable for all ages and welcomes disabled visitors by providing step-free access.

Hello Guys. Booked my tickets including some lectures. I will pop over and say hello. Steve have you decided what scopes you are going to display on the day? I ask because I want to access the size of the Skywatcher 180mm Mak Cass. See you on the 7th.

Mark

Looking forward to this...


Lee.

Not yet Mark but, assuming we don't sell out prior to the event, we can take a Skymax 180 PRO for you. I'll phone closer to the date to confirm.

See you there chaps

BTW, Opticron are the UK importer/distributer for Vixen Telescopes so if you are a Vixen fan it will be well worth visiting their stall

Also, check out Space Rocks. They always put on a good display and if you need help with your Tektites v Molvodites David Bryant is your man. One year a lecturer pulled out at the last minute so David kindly gave a talk in his place. It was very good!

I'll be attending coming to this event so I'll look forward to seeing SGL'ers there

I've been away for a few weeks so I'll have to try and book PDQ otherwise I'll just have to browse the exibitors stands !.

David Bryant of Space Rocks is an interesting guy.

Know Sidmouth and have been to the Obs, but for an anniversary of the solar observation by NL.

What is the traffic like?

Sidmouth is a popular place, as is Devon and it will be the first week of August so not exactly quiet. Just concerned that a trip could mean a lot of traffic jams down the 303 and into Sidmouth.

is there an astronomy fair in the south east this year at all?

Think that the South East equivalent is Astrofest at Kensington in Februrary.

Haven't heard of one elsewhere.

oh ok cheers mate!

Don't forget that AN will be there too, so if you have any feedback for the mag, let us know in person..

Hope to make it down with the family, as August will be a busy month with SSP and another little trip to do..

As an aside Steve, and as you are now doing Vixen gear, are there any of the clearance deals around on the Vixen A80MF OTA's?

The Americans had/have bucket loads of these going dirt cheap.

Could be a really nice reminder of his original telescope (which is now long gone along the way somewhere), for dad.

If they did, then the PST mod market would be much easier :-)

Apologies for the delayed response, I have been away on holiday so am catching up.

I think the traffic is okay. FLO has attended all the South West Astronomy Fairs. We are not aware of difficulties travelling to the event, if there are then nobody has mentioned them to us. Prior to joining us here at FLO Martin used to help out with parking at the SWAF, he isn't aware of problems.

Hope that helps

Has there ever been a Northwest astronomy Fair

We are discussing this with Opticron (Vixen's UK importers) and have one here to assess.

Opticron have a stall at the SWAF so if you are attending and have suggestions regarding this, or anything else Vixen related, you can find Pete (Pete is a member here on SGL) and Rob on the Opticron stand (between ourselves and the Widescreen Centre).

HTH

Not sure...

Astronomy Fairs like this are difficult to establish. To succeed they need good speakers, support from the retailers/distributers and the astro community. Fortunately the NLO have achieved all three, which is good because two out of three wouldn't have worked.

We can source the Vixen A80MF to sell at around £149, but only if we commit to orders of 100+

Unfortunately I don't think the PST mod' market here in the UK is large enough for us to commit to such a quantity and with such a long f-ratio it has limited appeal for regular observing. It would make an excellent guide-scope but now auto-guiding is the norm people are preferring shorter telescopes like the Startravel-80 or Megrez-72.

Astronomy is still a niche market here in the UK. The US have a customer-base around 5x larger than ours so their dealers find ordering 100+ telescopes less intimidating.

If I have missed something or you think that it would prove popular here in the UK, let me know

HTH,

Steve

I might try and pop down for this show looks interesting

There seems to be one next april in birmingham,

NEW ASTRO EVENT IN BIRMINGHAM

Eddie

Tom.Yates and Moocher have already begun generating publicity for that one Eddie.

I had meant to post this follow-up earlier but have been rather busy.

The visitor numbers at this year's South west Astronomy Fair were up again this year and feedback so far suggests a good time was had by all. Thank-you to everyone who visited FLO's stand to say hello





Unfortunately Simon at the Widescreen Centre wasn't able to attend this year as he was bitten by a spider the day before (I kid you not) which caused his arm to swell and affected his vision and balance! When we heard the news we figured it was so bizarre it simply must be true! I have a great deal of respect for Simon and the Widescreen Centre Simon is one of the industries good guys and always sets up an interesting stall so his presence was definitely missed. He says he is fully recovered and apologises for the inconvenience. He is looking forward to attending next year's event, as are we

Steve

That celestron really was a monster!

More images of the day can be found at
astro fair 2010
the rev

Each year we put something large and impressive (other than James) at the centre of our stall, the idea being to stop people in their tracks. This year it was the Celestron CGE PRO 1100 mount and telescope.

The way it attracted people from across the room we think it has its own gravity! It certainly has enough mass! Once assembled it took three of us, one on each leg, to move it. It's size, weight, fit and finish is very impressive! Our pictures don't really do it justice but the one showing it alongside an EQ6 PRO does give an idea of scale.

It took both James and myself to just lift the head unit out of the box and on to the tripod, and at first glance I could have sworn the EQ6 was actually an EQ5... it suddenly looked very small. Even the C11 on the CGEPro looked small...

Certainly not a grab and go unit