Deep Sky Imaging Session - December 30, 2011

Some ALPers went to Caliraya, Laguna last December 29-30, 2011 to do some deep sky observation and imaging before year ends. Although the early evening brought out some light rains and drizzles, it didn't discourage us to still do some observations and imaging around 11:00pm onwards. As for me, with constellation Orion already past meridian and going into western horizon, I tried to do some imaging on the IC2118 Witch Head Nebula in Eridanus was able to get some details despite some haze in the west as well as some thin clouds had hamper my imaging of the faint nebula. :( I will try again next imaging session in January.

I then proceeded to image NGC2244, a star cluster with Rosette Nebula in Monoceros. While it is also in the western sky already, I was still able to get a decent shot of the nebula amid limited sub exposure times. At around 4:00am, I together with fellow ALPer Arnel Campos tried to see if we can see a faint hint of the tail of Comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy as well as Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad. Unfortunately, we couldn't see Comet Lovejoy but we already expected that as it is for Southern hemisphere view , just pushing our luck only :) LOL As for Comet Garrad, it was supposed to be easy to recover near the Hercules constellation but there is a pesky low horizon clouds covering the view from us until it is already too bright for us to see it even visually :( Well, better luck again for us in January imaging session.