Deep Sky Imaging Session - January 24-25, 2026

The sky thia afternoon is very cloudy in Manila but weather prediction is Tanay is a tad better so Joaquin and I proceeded to Tanay at Viewscape Nature Park to do some DSO imaging under a darker sky we arrive at the site, the sky is almost 75% covered but rest are blue skies so after some rest, we started to setup our gears to prepare our imaging session.We were also able to meet fellow astrophotographer Dionisio Bogtae at the site as he was already there for several nights unlike us which is just an overnight session only. At around 7:00pm, sky started to open up near Orion as well as western skies for us to start imaging beautiful M45 Pleiades star cluster which we were able to image in the city but doesnt give justice for M45 to show its majestic beauty under darker skies. For me, I use my trusty Borg 76ED Refractor with ZWO ASI294MC PRO Astro Camera mounted on ZWO AM5 mount to image M45 Pleiades star cluster. I got into some tracking problems early in the evening which was caused by the hand controller getting slightly snag on the cables so giving me erratic crazy behavior before I found out the culprit! Nevertheless, I was still able to get some decent integration time to capture her with its beauty! Afterwards, around 11:00pm, clouds started rolling in as well as some drizzle thus forcing us to coverup our setups and get some rest and at around 2:00am, sky started to open up again but with slight haze so I only capture the trio galaxy pair of M81/M82 Bode's and Cigar Galaxies together with small galaxy NGC 3077in one field of view. I'm still quite happy with the results despite the erratic weather pattern that we encountered at the site as well as the tracking gremlin that pestered me :) We left the campsite at around 7:30am after our traditional group shot and went to Mang Vic Original Bulaluhan to have a delicious hot Bulalo meal to fill our hungry stomach before we head home and hoping to return again next month.