NEAF 2013

[Jessun]

As promised I thought I'd tell you a bit about this year's NEAF show in Suffern, just north of New York.

They ran their 22nd show and did it well! A huge sports hall formed the venue, and all the exibitors you'd expect were there plus some more.

Below are some snaphots and comments.

/Jesper

This is the view that met us walking in.

FLI showed their full product line including cameras and focusers.

Feathertouch used a cake stand to show off their range of smaller focusers (they are into cupcakes too!) The showed a new DSLR stepper motor focuser and a new motor focuser for the existing product line.

Borg - not a castle (in Scandinavian) but a combination of letters from the Japanese words for telescope and equipment - displayed a range of modular telescopes and they are all surprisingly light for their size. The 120mm refractor weighed less than 4 kgs.

They also showed a solar tracker - a guide scope to track the sun. Small, sturdy and clever! (It's the little white box).

Atik brought the whole range of cameras and Rui Tripa was at hand to talk about them all.

Astro-Physics were there in full force showing the new 1100GTO mount and the just slightly older 1600GTO plus the Mach1 and a range of telescopes. The optional absolute encoders are now ready to ship and be installed by the end user straight onto the axises. The two mounts mentioned use the exact same encoder rings and read heads - only the cables are different.

The software to take full advantage of these encoders - APCC - was on demo, and is close to release.

iOptron were represented by a large team and had many models on show - some mated with nicely built William Optics refractors.

Moonlite had the full lineup including a brand new rotator that fits on all their focusers using the correct flange.

Officina Stellare, a company with an astonishing range of reflectors brought a new RiDK, a Dall-Kirkham variant with f7.9. Their range spans f3.8 to f8 and they do mirrors up to 800mm I believe!

Planewave brought a 12.5", a 17" and a rather impressive 24" CDK plus their own heavy duty mount. I never saw one up close before and I was truly impressed by the workmanship. A truss dream!

QSI presented the new 700 series which included some clever stuff such as software assisted CCD alignment in tilt, 1GB buffer memory, dual processors and the possibility to store darks - and maybe even flats as well internally to have the image calibrated before download. Ethernet is built in too.

SBIG had it all on show, and had an elegant chip display. The 16803 is in the centre.

Skywatcher had some prototypes there, 80 - 120mm I think they were. They don't sell their mounts in the US so no EQ8 or anything to examine.

Finally, I think the most stylish telescope was this Televue planetary delight!

This is just a dip into what was on display. Many, many more were there with the latest and baddest and it was a true joy to browse around and speak to the people behind the products!

[melsky]

Excellent Jesper, lots of lovely toys to play with I wonder did you notice if Astrotrac were showing off their new GEM mount?

Mel

[Jessun]

Mel, I couldn't tell you for sure. They were indeed there, but to my untrained eye I don't know precisely what they brought.

/Jesper

[nmoushon]

wow! super jealous you got to go. wish i live in New England area for this.

[nmoushon]

double post. sorry.

[A McEwan]

Wow! So much nice shiny stuff to drool over! Some very high tech equipment there. Amazing when you think of how much money and creativity gets put into the development of astro equipment, and then the majority of it is made available for us mere amateurs. It's incredible that we as hobbyists have access to such a huge range of expertly designed equipment these days!

Ant