Telescope Reviews: NEAF anyone

Someone came through with a mobile hotspot, so the webcast could go on. The walkabout problem is that Mike Loffland's laptop is not charging his battery, and none of ours has an IEEE 1394 input, necessary for the videocam.

The chat is somewhat abbreviated, as only one laptop is connected; usually we have 2 or 3, so it's a conspiracy, er, "collaboration".

Normally, we get questions that send me walking the floor to answer; today, none.

Anyway, some of the New Product highlights are:

Televue's autofocuser

Stellarvue's 50mm doublet APO. I think Vic did this on a dare, but this little guy ISN'T a joke - one doesn't make a helical-cut R&P focuser to make mirth. It's a miniature, crafted with the same skill and passion that Vic is known for.

Celestron's 10+mp OSC Nightscape CCD camera* and the miniature standalone autoguider. Noteworthy (IMHO) at Celestron is that Dan Mounsey ("Doctor D" of Woodland Hills fame), whose opinions and advice I truly respect, has joined the company.

Meade: Every item Meade brought is brand new (with the exception of the solar scopes). The LX80* is a "tower" mount, superficially resembling iOptron's, but packing in many more (and surprising!) features (Can your alt-az mount also do EQ?) The LX600 fork mount is available in several sizes.

(Here the author succumbs to visitors at STARV II, and will continue later...)

Later (1:25AM 4/29) the thread picks up...The Meade LX800 EQ mount. Both the LX600 and LX800 feature the StarLock (tm) equipment. This includes both a wide-angle (for alignment) and narrow-angle (for autoguiding) chip with appropriate optics. The pair promises a new dimension in alignment and imaging. The LX800 has a couple of features I like; The Starlock and the correction of a quibble many of us ave with the tripod. The LX800 has 2 leg lock screws on each leg. Further, its claim of 1 arcsec tracking accuracy is attention-getting.

The Meade optics, I was told, were also new, but distracted by the new mount features, I didn't get into that.

iOptron had its existing mounts, but what coaught my eye (yanked in its direction by the legendary imager Tony Hallas) was the new i30 EQ mount*. This unassuming 20-25 lb capacity mount has incorporated, I'm told, the lessons learned from comments rendered by users of its prior mounts. It's fully autoguider-capable at the mount-level (not through the hand controller), and seems to be an imaging-capable mount of extraordinarily compact size.

* These three items are initial contestants for my modest selections for Best of NEAF 2012. But as Scarlett said, "Tomorrow's another day," and I have more patrolling to do...Korean mounts and OTAs, anyone?