Last October 1, due to impending bad weather, ALP president James Kevin Ty decided to cancel their planned stargazing session at Caliraya , Laguna.   But at around 5:00pm, the weather in Manila looked ok although satellite images for the Laguna area look still "IFFY."

Since the planned session was already cancelled, newest ALP member Brian Davis then invited James to his residence for a casual Mars observation.  They planned to meet at around 9:00pm at Sucat so he can guide James to his residence.  Since another new ALPer Irving Raymundo called up James to check if he would reconsider pushing through the session but James decided not to and  instead invited him as well as fellow ALPer Edgar Ang to join him to observe at Brian's place. He remembered that another new ALPer Alexander Loinaz lives in nearby Alabang, he called him up if he was interested to join them.  Alex obliged and will go by himself to Brian's place upon getting his address.

Since Brian's place was not that spacious, Brian told James that probably a maximum of 4 scopes can only be set up at his place.   James then decided not to invite further members to join him because of the limited observing area.  Since Edgar just recently got hold of a used Orion XT6 6" dobsonian reflector, he was very eager to test it on the red planet Mars :)

After picking up Irving at Shell Magallanes, they proceeded to meet Brian at Sucat and from there, they went straight to his residence. Upon arriving there, they started setting up their scopes besides Brian's C8 on CG-5 mount which was already setup before we arrived at his place.

James brought along his TV-101 refractor on Vixen GP-DX mount while Edgar was with his new toy the Orion XT6.  Alexander brought also his Celestron C-114 Newtonian on EQ-1 mount while Irving brought along his Celestron 15x70 binoculars.

They started out with observing M31 Andromeda Galaxy with Brian's scope while James pointed his scope at M45 Pleiades star cluster.  Edgar pointed his scope at the red planet Mars and was quite happy with crisp image.

At around past midnight, with Mars hovering above the fences of Brian's neighbors, Brian and James started to image Mars with their scopes.  Although the transparency at that time was not that good, the seeing was excellent and stable indeed!  Looking at Brian's Mars image at his laptop shows a very clear Mars image already even before it was stacked later which confirmed the night's good seeing!  Mars central meridian (CM) was showing the Chyrse region at that time.

They observed and chat the whole night long till clouds started to cover the sky.   At around 2:30am.  They started to pack up as they can feel a light drizzle starting  already.  to sum it up, the session was worth it although with limited space and observing time, the group had a great time and were all looking forward for the next observing run in the weeks to come.