Tag Archives: #neafposse

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

Another NEAF has come and gone. This past April 12th and 13th, Ryan & Heather Goodson brought New Moon Telescopes back to a triumphant return (and slightly wider booth) to “America’s Premiere Astronomy Expo” and, I suspect, by far the largest such event on the East Coast (if not anywhere). The NMT booth also served as a meetup spot for this year’s #NEAFPosse and a place to catch up with fellow CNY observers Stephen Shaner and Pedro Gomes. The NEAF Solar session, hosted by solar observing’s godfather (and regular article contributor) Barlow Bob was almost entirely unobstructed by clouds (although that wouldn’t have bothered ASRAS’s Marty Pepe’s Radio Astronomy setup any). After the Saturday festivities, Patrick Manley and the rest of the #NEAFPosse enjoyed several hours of space-inspired frivolity at the Challenger Center (complete with flight simulators, a fully-operational mission control, and cake!).

With two days full of vendors and catching up with members of Kopernik Astronomical Society, Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society, the IOTA (happy they don’t blame us for the cloud cover during the Regulus occultation), Astronomy Technology Today (with thanks for the additional copies of the NMT feature article in last May-June’s 2013 issue!), and various others you only see once a year (in the daytime, anyway), I was only able to catch one talk. That said, it was enough, both as an amateur astronomer and as someone engaged in public outreach. Stephen W. Ramsden, the man behind the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project, has put together an incredible (and very well-traveled) one-observer show that travels the world bringing solar astronomy to the masses. STEM outreach would be much farther along if every field of science and technology had a Stephen Ramsden out there. Do check out www.charliebates.org and consider donating to the cause.

With that, we await NEAF 2015!

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