Observatoire de la belle étoile: RCE 2016: Rencontres du Ciel et de l'Espace

Every two years, the french astronomical association (AFA: Association Française d'Astronomie), who is also publishing the major french astronomical magazine "Ciel & Espace", organize a big astronomy fair in Paris: RCE. It takes place at La Villette, a science center in Paris.

RCE is THE major meeting place for amateur astronomers from all the country (and more). There are more than an hundred conferences. Some talks are from key professional astronomers, several are from amateurs presenting their work. This year, I presented an introduction to spectroscopy with some historical background as well as key laxs such as Kirchhoff"s laws and Doppler-Fizeau effect.

Link to the talk slides (french):
http://thizy.free.fr/spectro/slides/20161111_Initiation-a-la-spectroscopie_OThizy.pdf

At the end, I had the opportunity to see the conference of Hubert Reeves on atoms and their creation (and their abundances in the universe with iron Fe peak and Li-Be-B gap)... It reminded me of a talk he gave 30 years ago at my engineering school (with more equations at that time!), and the ratio He/H just after the big bang... Anyway, it was very nice to see him again! Here are couple of pictures from Stéphane Neveu (my smartphone battery was dead by then!):

Hubert Reeves talk

This show, which attracted around 7500 people, is also a great opportunity to see some new products. This year we had a lot and I can't cover them all. I noticed a new Sharck-Hartmann from Alcor Prism company and an autonomous/automatic visual assisted scope designed by the french startup company Vuonis. This last one has a very nice design and seems a great "toy" for those who just want to see some nice objects, show them to their family/friends & share the images through social networks. A new astronomy in my opinion - anxious to see it in real conditions under clear skies! Here is a picture from Pierre Barroy:

A special note on a low consumption, simple to use but powerful & evolutive AstroPIBox designed by Sébastien Vauclaire & Philippe Deverchère:

Philippe showing the AstroPiBox to Christian Buil & Valérie Desnoux

Sébastien Vauclair, David Nagler (Televue) & myself
talking about AstroPiBox and other things [Trump! :-)]

Sébastien was surprised and happy to receive... an asteroid named after him!
I know the feeling... :-)

But RCE is a major place to meet all the friends in the astronomy world! So I was of course in several meal/discussion/groups through the week-end... A very happy moment!!!