NEAIC Early Report

There was too much covered in the various seminars on opening day to
cover here, of course. You may see a list of seminars at
rocklandastronomy.com. In breakout sessions I attended Warren Keller's
presentation on AstroArt; Peter Ceravolo's "Wide Field Imaging with
Monster CCD's"; and Steve Bisque's introduction to TheSkyX Serious
Astronomer Edition. I came away from Peter Ceravolo's talk with a
Zen-like vision of perfect balance: I can't afford a monster CCD _or_
the 'scope it would take to cover the 52mm diagonal from such a chip.

There are a number of vendors set up in the foyer outside the main
conference room, including SBIG, Yankee Robotics, Takahashi, Software
Bisque, OPT, Starizona, and certainly not least, "Uncle" Al Nagler of
Tele Vue. Unlike at NEAF (same venue, Saturday and Sunday) the vendors
are showing and telling, but not selling.

SBIG are showing several cameras, including one from the new STX
series. Three of the STX cameras are described as back-illuminated with
high QE. Two of the new cameras are available in mono or color, and one
is color only. No pricing is available.

Software Bisque were running TheSkyX Serious Astronomer Edition
side-by-side on a Mac and a Windows machine, both with large displays.
If you're a fan of SB, there is good news for you no matter what your
choice of OS. SB are integrating virtually all of their software into
TheSkyX. It will include CCD camera control, TPoint, Orchestrate,
AutomaDome, etc. The various modules will ship with the advanced
versions of TheSkyX, but one will pay extra to activate them
(presumably cafeteria style, with a cost for each module, though I did
not confirm that). I think that makes sense; one who prefers other
software for CCD control, or who doesn't need TPoint, won't be forced
to buy those features. The new software will run under Linux, Mac OS,
and Windows. I think it is not yet clear how much image reduction will
be done with the CCD module; there may remain an external CCDSoft-like
program. At the moment only the TheSkyX Student Edition is available,
and it has no device control. Release of the advanced editions depends
on the completion of lots of drivers for mounts and cameras. Richard
Wright, a Florida-based Bisque contract programmer, reported in an
on-line forum that he used an advanced version of TheSkyX running on a
Mac to control a mount at the Winter Star Party, and that it performed
beautifully. If you are a Software Bisque fan, you have some greatly
improved software to look forward to, IMO. SB's CCDSoft is my choice
for image acquisition, while I use MaximDL (Windows) and/or Nebulosity
& Photoshop CS3 (Mac) for image reduction.

Speaking of MaximDL, Doug George, developer of MaximDL, is showing a
preview of version 5. I didn't have a chance to look at it in depth,
but I did see that it corrects some interface issues, such as the
FileOpen dialog box not being resizable. Hallelujah! Doug may bring
Maxim to the Mac, as well.

John Stiles of Optical Guidance Systems had a couple of stunning R-C
'scopes with him. Unfortunately, with the depressed real estate market,
I'm not certain my house would fetch enough to buy any of them.

Breaking news as it happens.

Davoud

PS I'm working on a new web site at http://www.primordial-light.com.

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usenet *at* davidillig dawt com