european astrofest 2012

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:09 pm

ok, just to summerise (now thats its easy to make posts

)
costs so far..
Â£42 for conferance tickets
Â£30 for hotel + cont breakfast (I'd say <15 min walk from conf center)
Â£43 flights

just Â£105 so far, not bad I have to say

Gordon Lalor · Post by **Gordon Lalor** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:28 pm

Its excellent i'd say, and leaves you with loads of money to spend at astrofest itself.

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 4:29 am

Right.. that's me out.. scheduled to work that weekend...
Have a blast ye lucky sods.

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 10:03 pm

thats a pity, Frank, but hey, we'll be thinking of you when sussing out the 90mm H-alpha scopes, the big dobs and ethos eyepieces

Tom Walsh · Post by **Tom Walsh** » Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:13 pm

Well guys how was Astrofest?

Frank Ryan · Post by **Frank Ryan** » Tue Feb 14, 2012 5:48 pm

Yeah! C'mon! POIDH!

Dave Lillis · Post by **Dave Lillis** » Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:07 pm

well lads,
It was grand, I felt that there slightly less stands there then the last time we were there, no telescope house or greenwitch. The shops were good, with lots of high end imaging scopes, and h-alpha scopes and some expensive refractors and the odd few SCTs, there was very little in the way or "normal" equipment, very few counter weights stuff and only one collimator, nothing for the club really.
I got a televue sol finder for my SCT, nothing else, the sale prices were poor, the discount priceses were not good, Â£50 off a Â£750 eyepiece for example, We met Mr Nagler himself and they had a complete set on display, very impressive I have to say.
Lunt had a good range fo solar scopes there, but by god, they cost an absolute fortune, Â£700 for a 40mm scope.
Good to get hands on with all the gear, but you'd be crazy to buy almost any of it there.

Anyway, the talks were good, I had to miss the last 3 talks to make the flight back,

Gordon and I had a major trek around the underground system in London, the central line was closed going into the city that night, and we had to go around on a major tour around it to get where we wanted, at one stage we were heading in the wrong direction

,it was hilarious tbh, like a monty python sketch, anyway we finally got into the city center on Friday night, did the usual tourist trips, had a pint and got back ot the hotel at 2am, in the minus 8 celsius cold. At that stage we were totally shattered.

Got the 2012 almanac, first one since 1990, and got John Mason and Patrick Moore to sign/stamp it. Dont know if I'm wrong or not but I was happy to see that Patrick Moorse doesnt seem to have deteoriated since we last saw him 5 years ago. Got Brian May to sign a Queen book for me,

Anyway, a good weekend overall, interesting tour of the underground, good talks and interesting stalls. One trip I will do again.

Pics and full report will go up on the club events section of the website.

Gordon Lalor · Post by **Gordon Lalor** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:03 pm

Don't forget to put up the photo of you and Mr Nagler.