Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin - February 22, 2009

Hello:

After the NAW Free Public Stargazing Session at Baywalk, I together with ALPers Jett Aguilar, Vincent Lao, Dennis Buenviaje and Andrew Ian Chan went to PAGASA Observatory to try to observe and image the comet even under a not so dark sky there. After 30 minutes of setup and scanning the area, we were able to see the comet and I was able to image it below:


The comet was estimated to be around magnitude 6 more or less and from the image above, a 1.0 degree tail can be seen fiantly because of bad sky. Nevertheless, we plan to go to Caliraya this saturday under dark skies to try to get a more decent image of this comet. We stayed there till 4:30am PST and had a group shot taken before we packed up our stuffs.

February 9, 2009 Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

Hello:

Last night, amid a very bad prospect of seeing the Penumbral Lunar eclipse because of thick clouds , members of the Astronomical League of the Philippines as well as Astro students of the Rizal Technological University were at PAGASA Observatory in UP-Diliman to observe and image the event. Although this eclipse is penumbral meaning the Moon enters only the light shadow or penumbra portion of the Earth's shadow. The slight shading was obvious beause of the almost 92% immersion. Nevertheless, I was able to use my modest setup of TV-101 refractor with 300D DSLR at prime focus to image a few shots through opening s in the thick clouds that hamper the night's observation. We were not able to observe the entry of the Mon to the penumbral shadow at 8:36pm PST. It was only around 9:45pm hat some breaks in the clouds give us the opportunity to image the Moon . Below are the images that I took along the duration of the eclipse.

9:46pm PST

10:15pm PST

11:11pm PST

11:38pm PST

More images will be uploaded in the ALP webpage at http://www.astroleaguephils.org in a day or two.

JANUARY 26, 2009 PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE IN BOARDWALK , LUNETA

Hello:

I was with the members of the Astronomical League of the Philippines to document and image the partial solar eclipse that will be visible before sunset. The sky that afternoon was not that good but about 30 minutes past 1st contact, the Sun suddenly pops out of the thick clouds to let us view the already eclipsed Sun. I initially image the eclipsed Sun through my TV-101 refractor with 2x barlow thus giving a larger solar disk as seen below:

5:06 PM PST (Phil Standard Time)

5:37 PM PST
5:38 PM PST

After 5:38pm, the clouds again covered up the sky and made its final grand show a few minutes before sunset. When I saw that the Sun will set behind the freighter ship and my original 2x barlow image frame will not fit the entire ship, I quickly removed the 2x barlow lens in time for me to still able to squeeze in a shot before the it get covered by the ship silhouette as seen below:

5:49 PM PST

Me and my setup

ALP Boardwalk Partial Eclipse Team posed after a successful event!