The store
Every year, Hands On Optics, hosts The Eastern Astronomy Show. Several RAS members, like myself, John Raymond, and Bill Jeffries, have gone in the past and liked it, so John organized a road trip for the 2009 event (Saturday, Oct. 31). Joining John and me, were Bill Jeffries, Dave Walton, Tim Streagle, and Jim Langley.
The store is in Damascus, MD, which equates to about a two hour trip (when there’s no traffic congestion). They set up a tent in their parking lot for lectures, fire up a grill for hot dogs, and invite a selection of telescope vendors for demonstrations during the day. They also give away prizes periodically during the day, so there’s always something going on. Including discount prices on items in the store.
Self-aligning telescope
The Meade vendor gave a live demo of their LX6 line, which features the ability to line itself up with the sky, by taking snapshots of the sky with a builtin camera–it locates an alignment star in the field of view (by virtue of the camera), and makes self-adjustments to ensure the alignment star ends up in the center of the field of view. It does the same thing for a couple of more stars, and joila, self alignment. It also includes automatic leveling, so it’s pretty comprehensive.
Super fast eyepiece cleaning
Explorer Scientific had a unique product–they were showing how you could clean their eyepieces, just by dropping them in an ultrasonic cleaner and pushing a button. They’re able to do that because the eyepiece is purged with Nitrogen gas and sealed, so it’s waterproof. A good trick, but the eyepieces were pretty expensive–$299 and $399.
Urban astronomy
James Chen gave a very nice lecture on “Urban Astronomy.” He told us how to utilize filters, light barriers, and certain eyepieces, to maximize our astronomy observing in light polluted skies. He recommended at least two filters–a deep sky, and a UHC (Ulta High Contrast). And if you’re going to observe the moon, you must have a moon filter. James said he has had great results with Neodymium filters.
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