ALP Comet Imaging Session - March 12, 2013 (Success !!!)

Last March 12th, members of the Astronomical League of the Philippines (ALP) consisting of ALP President James Kevin Ty, Secretary Christopher Louie Lu, Treasurer Andrew Ian Chan, PRO Armando Lee, members Mike Enage, Ronald Sison, Hernando Bautista and Mark Vornhusen went to Baywalk , Luneta to try to capture again Comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS after sunset. The sky was mostly clear but there was a low lying cloud layer just below where the comet was supposed to be visible which is more or less around 10 degrees at 6:30pm. After several minutes of scanning the expected position of the comet, recovery was made more or less at around 6:30pm and they were rewarded with a good view and images of the comet after several failed attempts due to cloud obstructions. It was not visible to the naked eye as expected because of the twilight glare but is easy to see through my 12x50 binoculars and my estimated magnitude of the comet is more or less around magnitude 2-2.5. The comet is very condense and supports around 3/4 degree dust tail. A fainter shorter possible gas tail can be faintly seen which appears as a very tight V shape appearance on the image. Visually with the binoculars, it is hard to discern the faint gas tail :( I was able to capture the comet using Canon EOS 500D DSLR on Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens set at 400mm f/5.6 mounted on Vixen Polarie Star Tracker. 6 sec exposure at ISO 800. It was worth the effort and wait for us to be able to capture this comet. SUCCESS!