The commercial exhibitor room at NEAIC buzzed with products and skyshooters looking for cameras and gadgets, Suffern, New York, April 18, 2013. // Credit: David J. Eicher
The 8th annual Northeast Astro-Imaging Conference (NEAIC), one of the premier events for astrophotographers, kicked off Thursday morning, April 18, 2013, at the Crowne Plaza Conference Center in Suffern, New York. NEAIC precedes the major telescope show in North America, the Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF), which begins on Saturday, April 20. New York’s Rockland Astronomy Club is the key organizing body for both events.
When I arrived at NEAIC on Thursday, a couple hundred skyshooters were on hand, enjoying a wide range of incredibly detailed talks. Well-known imager Rob Gendler spoke about tricks and tips for processing data captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Jerry Lodriguss delivered a lecture on planetary imaging with DSLRs.
Astronomy magazine contributor Jon Talbot spoke about image processing with
PixInsight, an alternative to
Photoshop. Jerry Hubbell delivered a talk on how amateur astronomers can generate professional-quality astrodata. And French astroimager Olivier Thizy gave a great presentation on doing spectroscopy with small telescopes.
It was a fruitful day, packed with an incredible amount of impressive details for amateur astronomers. At times, the sessions reminded me of the complexity of formal talks at science meetings in their amazing depth.
Today, the second day of NEAIC kicks off, and set-up occurs for NEAF over at Rockland Community College.
Last night, members of the Astronomy Foundation held an organizational meeting that I’ll write more about later. Founding board member Vic Maris of Stellarvue Telescopes, his lovely wife Jan, Vice President Karen Jennings, and I went through an enormous amount of details on the foundation’s plans. More on that soon.
Now, back to astroimaging . . .
For all images from this trip, visit the Online Reader Gallery.