Well what can I say but ‘I want one’ although I would need to build a bigger Observatory to get this little puppy in 🙂

It’s been a while since I went to a full blow astronomy exhibition. The last one was Astrofest in London around 2005. While I was just looking for the best Imaging set up within my budget, I wasn’t buying – the problem of getting it all back, would have been a nightmare and in any case, none of the dealers actualy had stock at the show, or in their showrooms, so eventually I had to import directly from the manufacturers 🙁

However, London is a long way from Cornwall and Kensington makes the journey even more of a pig, so I was looking forward to ‘Sky a Nights’ International Astronomy Show in easily accessible Warwick for another expensive shopping expedition.  All the usual suspects were there, but this time their stands were brimming with goodies.

On my shopping list were a 10mm and 14mm Televue Delos eyepieces, An OIII filter and a 2″ x  Four position manual filter wheel. The filter wheel was the easiest to bag first. The choice of ‘one’  helped in the decision  making process, so I slapped my money of the counter and got the one made by Brightstar.

The plan is to have the nosepiece on my  Van Slyke turret machined down and  mate this to the filter wheel with an M48/M48 adapter. The four filter slots will allow for a Clear, an OIII, Broadband Nebula and a 0.9 ND filters to be fitted. This will save an awful lot of fart arsing around,  threading filters onto eyepieces or the turret nosepiece.

With that sorted, it was down to finding the best deal on the two Televues and the filter. In the end The Widescreen centre offered 15% off the eyepieces and with the Astronomik OIII and a dual White/Red LED torch, I haggled the price down to £650 for the lot.

With the wallet having taken a beating, it was left for us to just drool over lots of ‘I wants’ but ‘Don’t need’ goodies, like the Lunt 152mm H-Alpha Solar scope. However that APM 250mm APO could have found it’s way into the back of the car has we won the lottery on the Wednesday  🙂

All in all highly recommended. The venue was easy to get to, had more than adequate parking and had all the main dealers and manufacturers present. There were talks on offer at £6 a pop, but the FAS AGM or the Winchester Weekend give you more bang per buck, so we didn’t bother going to those.