Astrofest 2015

As I’m sure many of you know, last week we exhibited at European Astrofest in Kensington Town Hall, London. Not only was it my first astronomy show as part of Atik Cameras, but I feel I should confess that it was actually my first astronomy show, well, ever. Needless to say, everyone was lovely and there was a real buzz from having so many passionate, enthusiastic astronomers under one roof. It was also great to finally meet Rui and Pedro from the Portuguese side of the team, though I got the distinct impression that they weren’t so impressed by the British temperatures.

It was a busy Astrofest for us in the Atik arena, with the new 414EX and 4120EX cameras drawing a lot of attention, as well the Atik One we had showing off its internal filter wheel. We also had our video tutorials playing along with Steve’s wonderful sequence of Comet Lovejoy and some footage from the prototype All-Sky camera.

Due to some changes in our timeline this year, Astrofest saw the launch of our 2015 Astroimaging Competition rather than the judging of it, so do keep an eye out for a display of this year’s entries at a future event. There are already some wonderful images appearing in the gallery so I think we’re set for a good ‘un.

Friday was a clear night, so after a full day of Astrofesting we were able to see a few stars in the Kensington sky – which somewhat made up for us getting marginally lost trying to work out where we’d made our dinner reservations… but as you can see below, we got there in the end (the rioja made up for it too).

So to those of you who bought and/or accessorised your cameras, I hope you’re enjoying them and I look forward to seeing your images in the not too distant future. To those of you who just popped by for a coffee and a chat, it was an absolute pleasure, and after an incredibly enjoyable, rather tiring few days, me and Vince (accidentally!) took the scenic route home.