Telescopes Galore!

Northeast Astronomy Forum

I had a wonderful time April 18th at the Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) in Suffern, NY. Similar astronomical meetings are usually on the west coast, and the majority of equipment manufacturers seem to be from western states far from my eastern Virginia home. This relatively nearby event was a great opportunity to inspect equipment first hand, speak to several experts in person, and do side by side comparisons of solar observing equipment.

More than 107 exhibitors came to the field house of Rockland Community College as shown in the imperfect panorama below.

I spent hours walking from booth to booth ogling the beautiful expensive equipment on display. I'd love to have a small dome like this in my back yard.

What to put in the dome? An excellent telescope, of course! Although I gazed on the instruments below with visceral desire, I can only dream of owning all these beautiful refractors.

If I could afford all these beauties, I might need a mount like this next one designed for telescope hoarders.

Sometimes, binoculars give the best views. For only about $3,000 I could own these magnificent 100X27.5 Lunt binoculars.

Some telescopes, like the one below, were custom made works of art.

Telescopes were not the only items on display. One exhibitor crafted beautiful equipment from wood, including this shielded laptop desk.

In another exhibit experts illustrated mirror grinding techniques.

A few vendors sold meteorites and fossils.

I bought one pretty slice of a rare pallasite meteorite from Steve Arnold, one of TV's Meteorite Men. My small extraterrestrial fragment has a beautiful green transparent oval of olivine (peridot) embedded within silvery criss-crossed iron-nickle crystals.

The sky cleared just in time for April 18th, so I had an opportunity to view the Sun through a number of instruments set up in a courtyard outside the exhibition hall.

One fascinating piece of equipment was the Shelyak spectroscope which produced a view of the solar absorption spectrum in glorious, clear, high resolution. I had seen many pictures of this spectrum, but never viewed it live through an eyepiece with my own eyes. It was an astounding sight to see dark absorption lines so brilliantly displayed against a bright rainbow background! By turning the micrometer dial, as the gentleman is doing below, I could slowly move through the entire spectrum from red to violet.

I was particularly interested in views of the Sun through the monster 152mm double stacked Lunt solar telescope pictured below.

I'm glad I had the chance to compare the 152mm with other scopes nearby. I strongly considered buying this giant scope until I saw the view it produced and listened to words of caution from expert observers. I expected the 152mm view to knock my socks off, but it wasn't better than views I get through my much less expensive 100mm scope. Instead of spending big bucks to get the 152mm, I decided to buy equipment to upgrade my 100mm. When my second Lunt etalon filter arrives, I will have a double stacked solar telescope like this one.

The best views available, in my opinion, came from the following pair of scopes.

The larger Astrophysics 6-inch refractor, on the left, equipped with a Daystar solar filter, showed a beautifully magnified prominence and spicules on the solar limb. The smaller companion double stacked Lunt 80mm scope on the right provided an astounding 3-dimensional view of the entire Sun through a binocular viewer. The binocular view was so beautiful I had to buy a binoviewer for myself later that afternoon. I'm anxious to see the image my upgraded 100mm scope will give with the binocular eyepiece. My equipment should produce equally astounding views.

I also purchased a new camera and solar guider at the show. I'll write about them in future posts.