Presenters
These presenters are tentatively scheduled to talk during First Light Telescope Conference. Know someone who would be a great fit? How about you?
We are actively seeking solar astronomers who have built or modified telescopes. Spectroheliographs and PST mods are of high interest, but anything novel too. Contact Us.
Mel Bartels
8" Binocular Telescope Panel on DIY Smart Scopes
Mel Bartels has been a leader in telescope making and an expert in mirror making for quite some time. Can’t say enough here about him, so go to https://www.bbastrodesigns.com/tm.html to get a sense of his vast experience.
(will provide details on his talk later this summer)
Cindy Krach, DVM
Workshop: Sketching at the eyepiece
Cindy Krach, DVM, is a retired animal surgeon and pet care practitioner, who observes and sketches deep-sky objects nightly from her driveway on Crater Road in Kula, Maui. Cindy coordinates an astronomy observing sketch award for the Astronomical League, where she also has earned many observing certificates of achievement.
She is a frequent contributor to astronomy magazine. Check out her sketches on ASOD – Astronomy Sketch of the Day – under the pen name of Thia Krach. Cindy supports Maui Stargazing as a technical consultant.
https://www.mauistargazing.com/about-us/
Panel Discussion:
DIY Smart Scopes
Akarsh Simha, Mel Bartels, Dan Gray, Tom Otvos, Keith Venables, Rob Brown, more...
Small aperture smart scopes are becoming ubiquitous. But the supporting technologies are available independently, so why not bring them together for a larger aperture scope that is optimized for the images you want? Panel will discuss the very definition of a smart scope and how (if?) it differs from astrophotography, as well as address current technologies and their pros and cons. Session will be allocated 1.5 to 2 hours.
Lauren Wingert
Lightweight 17.5" Coulter conversion
Lauren is a frequent contributor to Sky and Telescope's Astronomer’s Workbench column which has earned her the title of Gadget Girl. Some of her previous accomplishments include a reclining binocular chair and a semi-scale 8” recreation of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Gord Tulloch
Gord has been enthusiastic about Astronomy since he saw his first telescope at age 8. Since then he has been fascinated with the intersection of Astronomy and Computing, from using his Apple II to calculate AltAz coordinates so he could manually point his 13.1" homebuilt Dobsonian in 1982, to running his telescope on the Bartels ScopeDrive system, to building open-source AI Assistants for Astronomy like AstroLlama with built-in Smart Telescope control. In the meantime, he has released several open-source Astronomy applications, notably mlCloudDetect, a machine learning-based cloud detector for All-Sky Cameras, and Astrofiler, a FITS file manager for astrophotographers. He is an active ATM with several completed optical projects under his belt, and a 24" blank in his garage awaiting his upcoming retirement. He also recently contributed the telescope, focuser, and filterwheel drivers for Alpaca on the INDI server for Linux based computers. By day, he works as an IT Director for a rural Manitoba School Division. He lives in Winnipeg with his wife Marie, kids Liam and Aidan, and two rough collies, Freyja and Fiona. He is the current Secretary for the RASC Winnipeg Centre. You can access his software at https://github.com/gordtulloch.
Artificial Intelligence in Astronomy
Brian Hayward
After seeing Saturn through a tabletop telescope in 2021, Brian was hooked on astronomy. Within 3 years, he had built a 17.5-inch Dobsonian around a classic Coulter mirror and an 8-inch f/4 travel scope that fits under an airplane seat. Brian is a Coordinator of the Rose City Astronomers (RCA) Visual Observing Special Interest Group and manages the RCA Web Forum as well. As a fan of the Astronomical League’s observing program, Brian built AstroPlan to solve his own paperwork challenges—creating an easy way for astronomers to log observations, track program progress, and seamlessly export reports for official review. He has also taken up astrophotography, but enjoys visual observing the most.
AstroPlan:
Tracking Visual observations and Astronomical League programs.
Rob Brown
Spray Silvering Demo Panel on DIY Smart Scopes
In past years Rob developed a simple optical test for monitoring the deterioration of silver coatings, and also presented results on testing of anti-tarnish coatings. This year Rob will demonstrate spray silvering live (on site attendees, possibly livestream). Silver has proven to be the way to go for large mirrors but also has value in small mirrors too.