JULY MONTHLY MEETING

July 4, 2004

Article and Images by James Kevin Ty

The ALP held its July  monthly meeting on July 4 2:30pm at PARC (PAWS Animal Rehabilitation Center).  Members who attended the meeting were host Oscar Lei, James Kevin Ty, Allen Yu, Henry So, Joel Munoz,  Jonathan Ty, Rich Pijuan, Jon Alcartado, Edna Aduna, Jhun Embuido, Dante Cruz, Emilia Agustin, Jahnice Rochelle Ponce, Melisa Bata and her brother Joel, Angie Tan, PAS member Dr. Jesus Rodrigo Torres, newcomers Leah Visaya, Arden Perez and his wife.

The meeting started with solar observation through Henry So's Orion Starmax 127 Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope equipped with Baader Solar Filter and mounted on EQ-3 equatorial mount. It was a happy reunion when Dr. Torres attended this meeting and was welcomed by most of the ALPers who had known him already.  He also wasted no time to look at the Sun probably eager to get his astro urge started again after several weeks of lousy skies.  Although the sky was clear today, the Sun was almost spotless with only small AR10639 sunspot group visible as a small bi-polar group.

Meeting proper started at around 3:15pm with a informal introduction of ALP members present as there are many new faces that attended this meeting.  Afterwards, ALP president James Kevin Ty giving a short roundup of the last month super event which is the June 8 Venus Transit Observation by ALPers.  ALP have created 3 teams scattered in observation sites in UP-NISMED, Cebu City and Cincinnati , Ohio, USA.

Dante Cruz then gave his impression of his observation of the Venus Transit from UP-NISMED.  His report was very concise and detailed.   Next, it was Jhun Embuido's turn to give his thoughts of the transit from Cebu.   He likewise gave a very detailed report to the enjoyment of the group.  As for the Cincinnati team, James reported the event in the absence of ALP member Francisco "Jun" Lao who is in US but gave his report data to him a couple of days earlier.   James then also show to members a beautifully made montage of the 3rd and 4th contact taken by Jun Lao as seen from Cincinnati, Ohio.

After the long Venus Transit report, it was Allen's turn to give a very educational lecture on how weather affects amateur astronomer's observation.  He describes in detail on how to determine the seeing and transparency conditions and also how to use various weather instruments to help you determine if it will give you a good or perfect observing session.  He tackle on how to use some weather instrument such as standard thermometer, wet and dry thermometer, barometer as well as hygrometer.

Then finally it was Joel Munoz's time to give a book review on the astro book titled Observer's Sky Atlas.   He then give his comments on how he love this book.  He use that book very often in the field to give him an idea on what to observe in a particular constellation as well as give him some info on the Deep Sky Objects (DSOs) that are visible from each constellation.  Each constellation gives lots of visual telescope fields for which an object of interest is located. His overall conclusion of the book is that it is a must have for amateur astronomers who are fun of hunting down DSOs using the manual star hopping technique as against the computerized GOTO technique.

Lastly, James invited members to join the society's monthly stargazing session which will be held on July 17-18 at TGPM, Buso-Buso, Antipolo. Before the conclusion of the meeting, ALP welcome to its fold new members Leah Visaya, Dr. Jesus Rodrigo Torres and Arden Perez.  Hope they will have a great time with the society in the months and years to come. They also got a group photo session before ending the meeting at 5:30 pm.

For more images of the meeting, click here.

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For Comments jkty@astroleaguephils.org