Comet & Lunar Imaging Session - March 14, 2013

The sky this afternoon was so cloudy and I wasn't even thinking of observing C/20122 L4 PanSTARRS later in the afternoon. This was even aggravated by the sudden heavy downpour of rain that even caused some small hailstones on some parts of Quezon City. After I fetched my son, the sky suddenly started to clear up around 4:30pm and I decided to just proceed to Baywalk, Luneta with my son to have some bonding by observing together with him on the comet as well as the crescent Moon. We arrived at the site at around 6:10pm and was also able to meet fellow ALPer Mark Vornhusen who also scamper to the site after his board meeting. We missed the sunset but were able to see the thin crescent Moon high above the western horizon. We then started to scan the western horizon for the comet as it was about 8 degrees above the horizon at around 6:30pm. We become a bit desperate when we still can't find it in our viewfinder as well as through test shots and Mark's 66SD refractor! We finally got to see the comet at around 6:40pm already and the comet almost less than 6 degrees above the horizon!!! We started to fire away our cameras and the comet needs a long exposure this afternoon compared to our exposures taken 2 days ago. But we were able to image the comet till it disappeared at around 7:07pm. We then observe and image the Earthshine as well as the thin crescent Moon before we packed up. It was a happy binding time for me and my son as we missed doing that already because of my busy work schedules.