I attended my first North Central Region of the Astronomical League – NCRAL conference this weekend in Minnetonka, MN.
They had several great speakers on various interesting topics. Everything from a radio telescope project that is literally located at the South Pole, to the NEO Surveyor and its asteroid hunting safari.
There was a “swap meet” there also with some great used equipment. Yes, I “accidentally” purchased another OTA. It is my first telescope in the Maksutov-Cassegrain design.
NCRAL was nice enough to run an astrophotography contest during the conference. I entered different photos in three of the available categories: “Deep Space”, “Solar System”, and “Rich Field”. Everyone present was able to cast a vote in each category. Surprisingly, I won first place in all three categories. They also award a “Best in Show” based on total votes overall, which I happened to win as well!
The Friday night trip to their observatory was well worth it. They have a beautiful facility! I snooped around at their roll off roof setup and their dome configuration. Of course, I had to take a look at Jupiter and its four largest moons through the dome telescope, since they were gracious enough to offer free peeks.
All in all it was a great experience. Thanks again to everyone that set up, ran, and spoke at the conference!
By the way: if anyone wants to page through more of my work, or read a couple of chapters on my processing techniques, I have a book called “Photon Recon” available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Photon-Recon…/dp/B0DTJVD4VT. One of my astronomy friends wrote the foreword.
