2022 Advanced Imaging Conference Recap
San Jose Convention Center – San Jose, CA
May 20-22, 2022
This year’s Advanced Imaging Conference in San Jose was the first tradeshow most of us in the telescope industry had attended since March of 2020. Started in 2004, AIC is where many of the world’s top astrophotographers, dealers, and manufacturers gather to discuss the state of the art. This year, we reconnected with some old friends, made some new ones, and of course, scoped out all the epic gear. Here’s a quick recap.
If you’re a loyal fan of our What’s Up? Webcast series on YouTube (and why wouldn’t you be?), you may have witnessed some recent higher production value in our livestreams, and we decided we would attempt a live walkthrough of the show to give fans a behind the scenes peep. Product Specialist and webcast host Kevin LeGore walked us through the show stopping at and chatting with the folks at the various booths and then chatted with Sky-Watcher ambassadors and YouTube famous astrophotographers Trevor Jones and Nico Carver.
At the booth there was of course a lot of discussion and questions about some of our newest product releases like the 62 and 82mm Evolux ED refractors and, of course, the new Star Adventurer GTi. mount.
Lots of fine folks stopped by the booth all weekend long.
We had hats and Sky-Watcher branded decks of cards to giveaway.
Which came in handy when our friend Simon Tang from Woodland Hills Camera & Telescopes stopped by to show us some magic card tricks.
There were heaps of amazing talks. We only got to attend a couple, but we obviously caught Simon, Trevor, and Nico’s talks. One standout presentation was by Phil Plait, or The Bad Astronomer. Plait got his start in astronomy research working with images from the Hubble Space Telescope and his talk was on The Art of Science - and the science of art.
Plait then yielded the last 5 minutes of his presentation to legendary imager Rogelio Bernal Andreo who dedicated his return to astrophotography following a hiatus to grieve for his late wife and creative collaborator Arianna Fu who passed suddenly last year. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.
After breaking down the show and the enjoying the buffet-style dinner we assembled at the local watering hole with our extended AIC crew, ambassadors, friends in the industry, and the Bad Astronomer himself as we chatted about how we all got into astronomy, showed off images of Kevin’s meteorite collection, talked about science and the state of world affairs, and even bared some space art tattoos.
All in all, a great reintroduction to in-person telescope industry events. Thanks to all the AIC founders, staff, sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, and attendees that made it such a great show.
Clear skies!