The Best of NEAF 2026 - Day 2
The best and newest offerings at NEAF: photonic cleaning, analog sky, skyrover, astro-physics, loic, aavso, daystar, explore scientific, skymapper, nPAE and darksky international....
The Space Koala Astrophotography by Luca Bartek
Great content
Super interesting, thanks!
No canon camera for the masses since 2012. The 200DX going imaging makes mass big visual good scope a rear view mirror item. The 180 is so important now.
Thanks for the coverage, what makes me a bit sad is that the entire hobby is moving towards imaging. No more premium dobs, and other visual observing equipment manufacturers.
2 minutes in and I already had my wallet ready. I found out that properly cleaning optical surfaces is really hard - especially cameras that had moisture inside of the sensor section. That was interesting and useful, thanks!
soon as I got home I placed my order for the polymer :D can't wait to clean my filthy schmidt cassegrains
Hello. Thank you for the video. Could you tell me the name of the Explore Scientific app that helps find objects in the sky? Thank you for your reply.
I believe it's called ExploreStars
@the_space_koala Thank you for your reply.
The Space Koala continues to go from strength to strength in all areas of this hobby and your NEAF coverage is as expected, best in class. Your enthusiasm and expertise is addictive. I haven’t bought a new telescope since I acquired my Questar, but the Observable Space stuff is absolutely eye popping, although a SeaStar is probably more realistic in my situation. Thanks for the great reports, Luca!
oh wow thank you for the kind words
Just so everyone knows, sky rover does have products that look similar to other brands existing products, but they aren’t copies or clones. For one thing, white label products are pretty common in amateur astronomy. The same eyepieces or telescopes are sold under different brand names. However, there are a few oem’s that make the majority of these white label products. One of those oem’s is kunming optics. Oberwerk binoculars are made by kunming. Eyepieces that are or have been sold by orion, celestron, astronomics and many others are made by kunming. Sky rover is the in house brand of Kunming.
thank you for the detailed info!
Absolutely love that you featured Analog Sky. I’m planning to make one as soon as possible and I love what this guy is doing. FYI for anyone interested, the plate solving finder installed on the big one is a PiFinder. It’s another incredible project that you can make yourself or buy from them. Very cool stuff happening these days in amateur astronomy.
Incidentally, that cute Space Koala logo looks perfect to *go on a collab telescope*, just in case the subject ever comes up at one of these gigs.
my own line of scopes would come with a stuffed koala sleeping on top :)
Yay! Got to see Jen and Tiffany from DayStar solar filters. Love my Quark and have been getting some incredible images.
Great video. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you Space Koala for visiting our booth and posting the video about our First Contact Polymers! Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, and don't forgot to check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@firstcontactpolymers/featured
Caramba, no hay mucha gente... ¿Por qué será?
Sublime content! I want to see the telescope booths, but glad to see you visit booths not telescopes. That cleaning polymer is amazing. Wonder if it also removes fingerprints? I need one! Dude was funny! Could be the next John Candy. Good to see him there. Should have asked him if it also removes those pesky clouds seen on weather apps like on one of your videos. Lol!
I'll be buying some and if people are interested I'll review it
Good review. Thanks
This Skymapper-gear… wow, I gotta have one of these!! 🥰
That glass/mirror cleaning product is so satisfying and looks awesome!
Thanks! I can't add a link in here but search for Photonic Cleaning Technologies or First Contact Polymers. We have a Testimonials page you can see a lot of "Before" and "After" images and comments from customers. Shoot us an email and we can converse how the polymer works.
nothing about Unistellar... are they dead already?
I don't believe they usually go to NEAF (at least I know they also weren't there last year). The Envision binoculars should be ready soon so you would think they want to show them off
Luca I saw you on the floor of NEAF on the first day and said a brief hello and also commented on your channel and what great reviews you do . To reiterate, you awesome reviews and are a credit to the Astrophotography and visual astronomy fields .👍👍
Hey Thomas, thank you for behind so kind