Together with fellow ALPers Armando Lee and Bobby Pejvak, we setup at the AstroCamp Observatory in SM Mall of Asia San Miguel by the Bay Park. I brought along my trusty TV-101 refractor and Coronado PST-Ha on Vixen GP-DX equatorial mount while Armand brought his Celestron C90 and WO 66SD refractor on Orion Atlas mount. Bobby , on the other hand brought along his WO Zenithstar 70ED refractor and Skywatcher 102mm Maksutov on Takahashi Sky Patrol 2 mount.
ALPer Bobby Pejvak beside his dual camera / scope setup
ALPer Armando Lee beside his dual camera / scope setup
Me and my imaging setup
ALP ISS Solar Transit - AstroCamp Observing Team
Till Next Session !!!
With a very cloudy sky that morning and the Sun not almost wanting to come out of the clouds, I had given up hope to imaging the transit in H-Alpha with the PST-Ha so I concentrated on the white light still imaging of the event. All three of us were also having a hard time focusing on the Sun but in the end were able to at least get a decent focus of the Sun before the said time. At around 8:29am, I started to shoot continuously so that I can be a bit sure that i got a good chance to capture the ISS even for 1 frame because in real time, even the most accurate predicted time might be off by a few seconds thus the reason for me to be hyper on this matter. At 8:30am time line, I could hear all of our Canon DSLRs shutters firing like mad as both 3 of us don't wanting to miss getting at least a souvenir shot of the ISS on the Sun :) LOL
To be sure, I only ended my exposure at 8:31am :) Afterwards, I got SMS and Calls fro our fellow ALPers observing this event at other locations. we had our customary group shot taken before we packed up all our equipment and head home or to our office with a good feeling that we might have a chance of capturing this rare event!
As I check my own solar images, I was able to capture 2 frames with the ISS on it. Likewise, ALPer Nathaniel Custodio who observe the event in his place in Taguig was also lucky to capture the ISS Solar Transit through passing clouds! But like Nathaniel, both our images were soft and grainy because of the slow shutter as well as high ISO used by us due to cloudy skies!!! Nevertheless, Nathaniel and I still are happy with the results of our first ISS Solar Transit Imaging and hopefully, we will be able to get better images in future ISS transit events.
Additional News:
ALPers Andrew Ian Chan in Ateneo de Manila and Christopher Louie Lu in Mandaluyong were not that lucky and were both clouded out totally without even seeing the Sun. ALPer Bobby Pejvak and Armando Lee also wasn't able to capture ISS on both his still and video :( ALPer Alexander Loinaz, who observe at PAGASA Observatory was also clouded out totally.
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