IOTA Booth at North East
Astro Forum (NEAF) 2014
Ted Blank
IOTA 2014 Annual Meeting
College Park, MD
Home Locations for 51 Visitors
to IOTA Booth at NEAF 2014
Thanks to Steve and Cindy Conard, Bruce and Dylan
Holenstein, Bruce Berger, Al and Alexandra Carcich
Booth Activities
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Equipment demonstration
VTI running and locked onto satellites
LiMovie “measure your own occultation”
Loop of videos of previous occultations and
grazes playing continuously
• Posters to explain the background
• Handouts of “all occultations in the next month”
• Friendly and good-looking booth attendants
As part of the NEAF Pro-Am Conference (NPAC) we again offered
the class in “Getting Started in Occultation Timing”
(also broadcast live on Ustream)
This resulted in a big discount on the price of the booth.
Thanks to Brad Timerson for quickly generating
a map of all occultations for the next month
Follow-up for 2014 So Far
• Sent out a follow-up email to all visitors
• Invited experienced IOTA members to contact
visitors who live close to them (several have
done so)
Next Steps
• Consider NEAF 2015 (they do want us back)
– April 18 and 19, 2015
• Northeast Astro Imaging Conference
– Precedes NEAF, also gave a talk there this year
• Looking into ASAE in Tucson, November 2014
• NEAF Pro-Am Conference (NPAC) will grow –
shall we increase our involvement?
– In 2014: IOTA, Lowell Amateur Research
Initiative (LARI), “Target Asteroids”, STARMUS