Traffic was unusually heavy at the South Luzon Expressway due to vacationers taking advantage of the 3-day weekend brought about by the Monday Labor Day holiday. This really set back our schedule such that we arrived at our observing site at Caliraya almost too late for the Pleiades occultation. James was still able to take some decent images but I made the mistake of not setting up my GP-DX mount and relying on my Nexstar 5i for my imaging. Apparently, the Nexstar 5i had very poor tracking with my hurried alignment and all I got were trailed stars.

After viewing the end of the Pleiades occultion which we did in front of the Hilltop resort gate to avoid the intervening trees, we then proceeded to our designated site at the camping grounds fronting the resort. The sky at the camp site was just great - very dark and clear and giving us an almost 360 degree view. For me, the camp site was an improvement compared to the Hilltop resort. The only spoilers were the cellphone tower in the Southeast and the trees partially obstructing the Northwest. The grounds were more spacious and we didn't have to waste time ordering and eating at the restaurant. This time, we just ate our provisions which didn't take much time and we were able to set up our equipment earlier. There was an unobstructed view of Polaris and I was able to do a polar alignment in record time. Unfortunately, despite my good polar alignment, I was still having some tracking problems with my mount throughout the evening and I had to content myself with imaging only one or two objects.

I started by imaging comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann fragments C and B. Both fragments have significantly brightened since the last time I imaged them at my light-polluted place in Quezon City. The dark sky of Caliraya allowed me to use longer exposures and I got much better images this time.

SW3- Fragment C

SW3- Fragment B

At this time, I was still having persistent tracking problems with my GP-DX mount and Skysensor 2000 and I had to satisfy myself with just two DSO images.

My first DSO image was the magnificent Swan or Omega nebula (M 17), also known as the Checkmark, Horseshoe or Lobster nebula. The characteristic shape of its reddish nebulosity explains the proliferation of descriptive names for this 5,500 light year object. It actually reminds me of the logo of a local brand of soy sauce ("Silver Swan"), and from its shape, one can even say it is the “Number 2” nebula. Whatever its name, it is quite a beautiful object either visually or photographically.

My second DSO image was the Eagle nebula (M 16) some 7,000 light years away in the constellation Serpens adjacent to Sagittarius. It has been popularized by the images of the Hubble Space Telescope, highlighting its photogenic star-forming nebulous pillars. This was a stack of two images (110 sec exposures each) processed in MaximDL and Photoshop 7. My tracking problem was more obvious here, with the stacked image showing distorted stars.

Despite all our setbacks for this Caliraya session (yes, I even managed to fry my Inverter), we went home happy with our observational and imaging output. The new site seems to be better than our old one and I'm excited again to go back this May, weather permitting.