Today I am in Brea, California to attend the Orange County Astronomers AstroImage 2006 Conference.
I've been planning to attend for a while. A couple of days ago I found out that my friend Wayne, Mr. Galaxy, was interested in carpooling out, so we hit the road early this morning. Since the OCA conference does not start until 6 p.m. tonight, and it's only about 20 miles away, we decided to make a pit stop at the Meade Instrument Corporation's headquarters in Irvine.
We were very fortunate to have a personal tour of the factory by Vice-President Scott Roberts. It was really amazing to see some of the high-tech equipment in operation. We saw mirror polishing, collimating equipment, coating ovens, alignment tools, etc. The telescope apertures ranged from 8 to 20 inches and there was cool stuff all over the place, including a whole bunch of MaxMounts which are close to shipping. It was like being in a candy store just for amateur astronomers!
I was not allowed to take pictures inside the factory but here is one from outside the building.
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