| AstroFest 2003 - 7th and 8th February 2003 |
| News and comment from the UK's leading astronomy exhibition |
AstroFest provides an annual opportunity to see new products and to meet up with old friends. Lesley and I attended both days and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you didn't manage to get there yourself you might like to read about some of the things we particularly enjoyed.
Terry Dobner with his 20-inch Dobsonian on the BC&F stand
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Terry Dobner is a former colleague from the Royal Greenwich Observatory who carries out occasional bits of engineering work for Green Witch, so we were pleased to see him there with the new Dobsonian he had built for Pulsar Optical. Lesley immediately christened it the 'Dobnerian' (pronounced Dobneerian). Gary and Dave from Pulsar built the original prototype and took it to the Equinox Star Party at Thetford last year where it attracted a good deal of interest. Using feed-back from the Equinox they've refined the design and now have an excellent product. The design is based on the 'Dobsonian Telescope' book by David Kriege and Richard Berry. Terry recommends the book as it contains all the detail needed to build a successful large Dobsonian first time. (We usually have the book in stock if you need a copy.) Terry and Gary will be producing a series of 18-inch, 20-inch and 24-inch Dobsonians.
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Ken Huggett and his wife Rosemary were on the Venturescope stand showing off their brand new 50mm solar telescope. Called the Solarview 50, and with a band-width of 0.7 angstroms centred on the hydrogen alpha line, it is the ideal instrument for observing prominences and surface details such as plages, filaments, flares and granulation. One of the first instruments I worked on at the RGO was a spectrograph based on a Fabry-Perot etalon, the optical component at the heart of the Solarscope, so I enjoyed talking to Ken and hearing the finer points of his design. He certainly knows his subject and makes use of modern facilities at a centre of laser excellence on the Isle of Man for manufacture and test.
Ken's Fabry-Perot has a completely clear aperture, unlike some competing models and as you would imagine, this provides excellent contrast, both visually and photographically. Ken showed some images taken by Jack Newton at the Arizona Sky Village and they are absolutely stunning. This telescope sets a new standard in solar astronomy and will be highly prized by anyone wanting to study our local star in detail. We were so impressed that we bought serial number 14 on the spot and brought it home with us. If you choose a sunny day we will be delighted to let you try it at Green Witch.
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Solarscope Ltd were there with their brand new 50mm hydrogen-alpha telescope
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Tom Ryan's Russian telescopes attract almost as much attention as Elena, House of Optics' Russian partner.
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Tom Ryan was there with an impressive array of Russian telescopes. His Maksutov-Newtonian and Maksutov-Cassegrain telescopes are becoming more popular as discerning observers get to know just how good is the quality of their images. The Mak-Newts in particular have very small central obscurations giving them good contrast, no false colour and a performance that approaches similar-sized apochromats but at a much lower price. The largest Maksutov-Newtonian we have supplied to customers is the 10". One of them has been built into a Dobsonian mount but most people use them equatorially. Tom had two Alter D6 mounts on display and the 7" Mak-Newt on a D6 remains one of the most cost-effective ways to get superbly high performance. AWR technology have perfected their computer control system for the Alter D6 which costs about the same as Vixen's Skysensor 2000.
One of our customers has asked us to produce a pier for his D6 which we shall be doing shortly. Tom confirmed that he can now supply the D6 head without the tripod for anyone wanting to put it straight onto one of our piers.
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Orion's new OMC 200 has been eagerly awaited for some time so we were pleased to see it for the first time. Barry Pemberton had it mounted on a Vixen Atlux. This is an impressive mount and we have some experience of it, having supplied one to an Egyptian research station to carry a 14" Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain tube assembly. Our first OMC 200 will be on a Vixen GP DX mount but the telescope really looks good on the Atlux. Barry was busy every time we went near his stand so we didn't get a chance to find out how deliveries were going. We hope to receive our first one soon after Astrofest.
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One of the main attractions on the Orion stand was their new OMC 200. The handsome chap behind it is Chris Marriott, author of SkyMap Pro.
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Celestron's well-respected 14" SCT on the new computer controlled equatorial mount.
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We had been to see David Hinds at Tring quite recently but hadn't yet seen the new 14" SCT. This is a beautiful looking telescope with a german equatorial mount that has very clean lines and appears to be as solid as a rock. It is very quiet in operation and looks set to enhance Celestron's reputation for fine engineering.
David was also demonstrating the new contrast-enhancing filter from Baader. He had two eyepieces mounted in a bino-viewer, only one of which was fitted with the filter. Looking at a light bulb filament it was easy to see just how much the filter reduced false colour and produced a better image. There is a little bit of colour shift but the filter looks like a good addition to an achromatic refractor.
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It's always a pleasure to see a British company doing well and Starlight Xpress certainly deserves its success. Terry Platt continues to combine his electronics design ability with his knowledge of astronomers' needs to produce cameras that are amongst the best in the world. His latest model, the SXV-H9 looks set to become a real winner. Terry was showing an image of the Horse-head Nebula taken with the SXV-H9 through a 10-angstrom H-alpha filter. The exposure time was half an hour using a Takahashi FSQ106, quite a modest-sized telescope. The image was superb and Terry used it to demonstrate how easy it can be processed to bring out all the detail.
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Starlight Xpress' SXV-H9 is the latest addition to their impressive range of excellent CCD cameras
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We used the Star-raker at a star party we hosted for Bedford Astronomical Society and it proved very popular
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Telescope House's stand was one of the busiest places in the exhibition and besides the usual comprehensive display of Meade equipment they had a corner dedicated to the accessories produced by BC&F Astro Engineering. We've been supplying the BC&F range to our customers for some time and were pleased to see how the range has grown. Robert Dalby demonstrated several new items including two binocular mounts, the Star-raker and a mount that incorporates a mirror to make astronomy so much more comfortable. I didn't catch the name of this new binocular mount but we'll be getting one in soon to try. It consists of a mount that holds the binoculars so that they look down onto a tilting mirror. It's a bit like using a microscope. There will be two versions, one of which has a built-in heater to prevent the mirror from dewing up.
BC&F Astro Engineering also have a new web site where you can see all their accessories. It's worth taking a look at it and if there's anything there that you want we can get it for you, even if we don't normally stock it. Visit http://www.astro-engineering.com/ for more details.
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We took the opportunity to catch up on progress with the Liverpool Telescope and the National Schools' Observatory at the Liverpool John Moores' stand. The Liverpool Telescope is almost re-assembled on La Palma and first light is expected in a few weeks. Dave Carter, the project scientist, was quoted as predicting that the telescope would be available to schools in the autumn. Having played a major part in establishing this project I was pleased to hear that it is making good progress.
If you know of any schools who might be interested in using the telescope, or benefitting from the teaching resources provided as part of the project, please tell them to visit http://www.schoolsobservatory.org.uk/
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The Liverpool Telescope in TTL's Merseyside factory - notice the roof opening that allows sky testing to be carried out
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Neil Parker, February 9th 2003
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