I’ve been meaning to write about my trip to San Jose for my first AIC meeting for some time. Madi gave me this trip as a Christmas gift. The AIC has been meeting once every two years, but just like most events, plans changed due to Covid.
This was truly an amazing experience for an astrophotographer, and I highly recommend anyone interested in astrophotography to attend. The catchphrase there was “The greatest gathering of astrophotographers under one roof”.
For a two-day event, it was jammed packed with presenters, sponsors, exhibits, big giveaways, and a wonderful dinner. Terrific opportunities to meet experts in astrophotography, and for me a chance to finally meet face-to-face with people I’ve talked to by phone or Zoom meetings.
I met with two of the three Masters of PixInsight team members, Pete Proulx and Warren Keller. Ron Brecher could not make it to San Jose this time, but several of us posed in Hawaiian shirts in his honor, including yours truly (lower right).
There were 24 presentations, given by Jon Talbot, Wanda Conde-Silva, Sean Walker, Kerry-Ann Leck Hepburn, John Hayes, Warren Keller, Yuri Beletsky, Simon Tang, Russ Croman, Adam Block, Peter Jenkins, Harry Krantz, Trevor Jones, Nico Carver, Dr. Phil Plait, and Dr. Dirk Froebrich. In addition, there was the Hubble Award and lecture. This year’s recipient of the Hubble Award was Bob Denny, the father of ASCOM.
Russ Croman headlined a very interesting presentation on artificial intelligence and its use in astrophotography post-processing. Russ explained how the AI process works and evolves to create tools for noise reduction and star removal for astrophotography images. We can expect more tools to be developed in the future based on AI technology that will greatly improve how we process images.
You can register with the AIC website free of charge and access the presentations.
I came away from the event with more expert contacts and some new products to help with astroimaging. But most importantly, meeting new friends in person for the first time. Rogelio Bernal Andreo, author of Mastering PixInsight, graciously autographed my copy of his book, as did Warren Keller on my copy of Inside PixInsight. Rogelio also gave a surprise and moving speech Saturday morning.
Please follow the embedded links in this blog post for more information.