Lunar Imaging Session - December 26, 2018

After having Christmas dinner with family and KC godparents, we saw the beautiful clear Waning Gibbous Moon, KC and I went to our parking area to image the Moon using a simple setup of trusty Borg 76ED refractor with Canon EOS M6 Mirrorless camera on sturdy tripod.

Comet 46/P Wirtanen Imaging Session - December 11, 2018

The sky in the evening was fair and I setup together with my son to try to view and image Comet 46/P Wirtanen which has an apparent bright magnitude of around +3.5 but since this comet is very diffuse and large, the magnitude estimate is rather tricky and real estimates might be like magnitude 6-7 as it is even dimmer than M42 Orion Nebula! After a few minutes of star hopping under the light polluted sky of Manila. We located the area where the comet should be and using a 30 sec exposure using the Canon EOS M6 mirrorless camera with Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 set at 400mm f/5.6 mounted on Kenko SKy Memo-R star tracker confirmed the comet! Only the comet's inner nucleus can be imaged with the sky condition we got but we are still happy we were able to locate it. An added bonus is that we both were able to see a bright mag -5 whitish Orionid bolide flashing its way from Orion toward the western horizon. My estimate it traveled about 50 degrees with a light hissing sound. Unfortunately, I was able to expose only 6 frames before the sky got clouded out ending our session.

Lunar Imaging Session - November 15, 2018 (Lunar X)

The sky this evening is clear and the Quarter Moon with Lunar X feature is visible tonight so I use my Huawei P20 Pro coupled afocally with Celestron NexYZ smartphone adapter with 32mm Plossl on a Celestron C90 Maksutov-Cassegrain and taken at 40MP resolution to image the X feature.

Lunar Imaging Session - October 24, 2018

The sky this evening is clear and the Full Moon is majestic and beautiful! I quickly setup my trusty Borg 76ED refractor on sturdy tripod to image the Full Moon at prime focus.

Lunar Imaging Session - October 18, 2018

The sky this evening is partly clear so I use this opportunity to do a first light on the Celestron C90 Maksutov-Cassegrain as well as the Celestron NexYZ phone adapter to break the cloudy jinx that often occur on a new telescope. This is to lessen the chance of getting clouded out on the upcoming October 20, 2018 International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) from 7:00-9:00[m at SM By The Bay Sunset Park at SM Mall of Asia, Pasay City. A beautiful conjunction between the Waxing Gibbous Moon as well as planet Mars is visible near the zenith so I use this opportunity to image the conjunction as ell as image through the C90 as well as my gathering dust Borg 76ED refractor to image the conjunction event.

Lunar Imaging Session - August 29, 2018

The sky this evening is partly cloudy and hazy. It's been a while since I was able to do any astro imaging even on the Sun and Moon so I brought out some old scope from my storage room to feed her some photon lights :)LOL . I took a single image of the Waning Gibbous Moon using Canon EOS M6 mirrorless DSLR on Borg 76ED refractor at prime focus with 1/500sec at ISO 400 on sturdy tripod. I wasn't able to do more image shot as clouds and building obstruction started to interfere my super short session.

Solar Imaging Session - August 4, 2018

The sky this afternoon is partly cloudy and seeing is poor. I decided to use my portable solar setup with the Canon EF100-400mm this time. AR2717 Sunspot Group has lost its sunspot pore and is now only visible in the Ha wavelength as plage region. There is also a nice large eruptive prominence visible in the NE limb. Sky then gets cloudier and I have to quit imaging as I can hear thunder and sky dimming quite fast :(

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.

Solar Imaging Session - June 29, 2018

Had a very busy day and I arrived home very late in the afternoon but nevertheless, I proceeded to image the Sun. Yesterday's large hedgerow prominence in the SE limb is still there but had started to collapse a bit. There is also a faint eruptive prominence just above the SE hedgerow prominence which is hard to image as low in contrast. Aside from this 2 prominences, the large filament is still visible and now is nearing the western limb as well. No sunspot groups are visible.

Lunar Imaging Session - June 28, 2018

The Full Moon or the Strawberry Moon this evening is beautiful and I can't resist not imaging it with my Canon EOS M6 mirrorless camera with Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens set at 400mm f/11 at 1/800sec at ISO 200 on sturdy tripod.

Solar Imaging Session - June 28, 2018

The sky this afternoon is clear and seeing condition is very good. Departing AR2715 Sunspot Group is very silent as it nears the western limb. There is a long Filament visible faintly following AR2715 Sunspot Group vicinity. There are 2 beautiful large prominences visible in the NE and SE limb . I was also able to image boring AR2715 Sunspot Group in white light as well.

Solar Imaging Session - June 23, 2018

The sky this afternoon is hazy and seeing condition is poor. AR2715 Sunspot Group is very active and has a lots of flaring activity inside its core. Departing AR2713 Sunspot Group is a bit quiet as it nears the western limb. I wasn't able to image in white light as clouds started to cover up the Sun. :( Better luck again tomorrow.

Solar Imaging Session - June 3, 2018

The sky this afternoon is clear and seeing condition is good. AR2712 Sunspot Group is nearing the NW limb but still producing some nice flaring activity inside its core. There is also a large hedgerow prominence visible int he SE limb. A huge, long plage is also developing in the NE quadrant that might develop into an active region in the days to come.

Solar Imaging Session - May 29, 2018

The sky this afternoon is a bit cloudy and I initially thought that it is another bad day for solar imaging. But after a hard rain, the sky started to open up a bit but unfortunately, the Sun is starting to get low in the western horizon but I still proceeded to do a short imaging session on the new AR2712 Sunspot Group as well as a nice large Hedgerow prominence in the SE limb. Seeing condition is poor as expected because of the Sun's low elevation already but I'm still happy with the result nevertheless.