July 28, 2018 Total Lunar Eclipse Imaging Session

The sky on the evening of July 27, 2018 was very cloudy and lots of drizzles also hampered the ALP's Planet Watch as well as Total Lunar Eclipse free public viewing session at Sm By The Bay at SM Mall of Asia, Pasay City. I join some members of the organization to set up the free telescope viewing of the event. In the early evening, there are some breaks ion the clouds and rain that allowed them to let some people get a decent view of the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars as well as the Full Moon. Members who were present were ALP President James Kevin Ty and his son Kendrick Cole KC Ty , Treasurer Andrew Ian Chan, Secretary Justine Garcia, Auditor Edgar Ang, Per Edman, Edwin Gatia, and Michella Esparas . After midnight, they prepared for the observation and documentation of the eclipse but as expected, the weather really gave a big blow to the successful documentation of the evening as almost the whole session are hampered by strong rains as well as thick clouds! I was only able to get only a few shots prior to totality :( It was a very disappointing session in terms of documentation but the joy of observing with the members of the ALP still give us some joy despite the odds against them.

Reprocessed Saturn July 5, 2018 Image

With a lot of clouds and rains continuing to hamper our local sky. I spend some time reprocessing my July 5, 2018 Saturn which I think the color balance was a bit off to the yellowish green tint. I tried adjusting again the RGB and adjust a bit on the white balance as well as further color adjustment correction tips by my friend Melvin Giraldo and it looks a little bit better than my previous posted image. What do you think? Current

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July 28, 2018 Total Lunar Eclipse

On the early morning of July 28, 2018 , a total lunar eclipse will be visible in the Philippines as well as Asia , Australia, Europe and Africa. This will be the second total lunar eclipse of 2018 and has a long duration of totality of about 1 hour 43 minutes as the Moon will pass thru the Earth's shadow almost centrally. This eclipse will be dark red during totality and will be popularly called the Blood Moon :) The Moon will enter penumbra at around 01:15am . The umbral (partial) phases run from 02:24am to 06:19 am, nearly 4 full hours, which results from two factors. First, the Moon passes directly through the heart of Earth's umbral shadow, just 6 arc minutes from its center. Second, the Moon is near the apogee of its orbit, meaning its most distant from Earth, resulting in a slightly diminished orbital velocity. Totality lasts almost 1 hour 43 minutes , from 03:30am to 05:13 am. Unfortunately, we won't be able to observe the entire eclipse in its entirely as the Moon sets at around 05:44am, almost 35 minutes before the Moon exits the dark shadow :( All times in this article are in Philippine Standard Time (PST) or +8 GMT or UT. ALP will be having a free public stargazing session on the evening of July 27th to observe the closest approach of Mars (Opposition) as well as observe the planets Jupiter and Saturn at SM By The Bay Amusement Park , The event will continue till the morning of July 28th to observe and document the total lunar eclipse till Moonset.

Jupiter and Saturn Imaging Session - July 4 / 5, 2018

The sky this evening is partly cloudy and hazy. Seeing condition is also very poor. I used a Meade 8" f/10 SCT with ZWO ASI120MM webcam with Baader RGB filters and Televue 2.5x Powermate as imaging gear for the session. I started out with Jupiter as my first target and it was very hard to focus as it was like a jelly bean so it took me a while to be able to do slightly better focusing a bit after the telescope had cooled don for more than 1.5 hours. Nevertheless despite playing hide and seek with the clouds, I was able to get small window for me to get a set of RGB image and with the clouds keeping me at bay most of the night, I just get a little bit more of patience to wait for Saturn to clear the building for me to do also a single set of RGB image as well. Despite the poor condition that I was experiencing, I'm still glad to still have some time viewing Jupiter and Saturn as well as image them both at the same night. Hopefully , will have better seeing condition in future imaging session.