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MAY 6-7, 2006 ALP STARGAZING SESSION AT TGPM, BUSO-BUSO , ANTIPOLO

by James Kevin Ty

Last May 6, ALPers that include James Kevin Ty, Brian Davis , Irving Raymundo , Henry So and friend Allen went to Touch of Glory Prayer Mountain (TGPM) in Buso-Buso, Antipolo to have an impromptu stargazing session. The group meet at McDonald's Katipunan at around 7:30pm before they go together to the site.  Henry called James to let him know that he has some errands to make first so told him that he will catch up with them a little later.

The group arrived at the site at around 8:30pm  and had a cup of coffee 060507-a.jpg (64662 bytes)before going to the hill to setup their equipment. James brought his usual astro setup with TV-101 refractor on Vixen GP-D equatorial mount ; Brian with his C8 SCT on ASGT equatorial mount ; Irving with his Orion XT10 with digital setting circle while Henry brought a pair of 10x50 binoculars.

Brian was eager to setup right away as he just bought a new Canon 30D DSLR and is very excited to try doing some prime focus astrophotography with it.  Irving, on the other hand, will be trying his newly bought Lumicon UHC narrow band filter.

James, on the other hand, started out with imaging M4 and M13 as test objects to check on his focus before slewing his scope toward 73/P Schwassmann-Wachmann Fragment B. had the comet on his mind for that night's session.  He did all his comet shots with his TV-101 refractor at prime focus with his Canon 300D DSLR body.  He started imaging the 73/P Schwassmann-Wachmann Fragment B which is a bit high already and about   magnitude 7.5 . While doing his round on this comet, he noticed that the comet moves so fast and it less than 30 minutes, the comet had moved rapidly out of his guiding recticle's field. So he decided to take more time imaging it before going to the next main Fragment C.

The clouds started to come in from nowhere and covered the area where the comet is situated.  During that break, James went to see how Irving and Brian were doing.   Irving had already observe quite a lot already such as NGC 5139 Omega Centauri, 73/P Schwassmann-Wachmann Fragment B and C , M51 Whirpool Galaxy, Globulars M3 , M13, M4, M80,  Cat's Eye Nebula, Bug Nebula, Ring Nebula, Lagoon & Triffid Nebula , Swan Nebula , Eagle Nebula , Dumbbell Nebula , Blinking Planetary, Little Gem Nebula , Open clusters Wild Duck , M7 , M6 , NGC 6231 and planet Jupiter.

Brian was spending most of his time trying to get a good shot of 060507-b.jpg (83393 bytes)the Omega Centauri as well as Ring Nebula.  He also tried to image the comet but his drive was acting erratically thus he cant find the comet :(  He later imaged Swan Nebula as well as Eagle Nebula.

When the clouds finally moved out of the area where the comets were located, he started to image this time on the Fragment C.  It was a bit bright at magnitude 7.1 and big so he was able to guide on the comet's nucleus to get a better shot of it.

He later tried to image Fragment G but was unsuccessful because there was a thin haze in the sky :(  Nevertheless, he was quite pleased with the results of his comet images. They started to packed at around 4:30am with a big smile on their faces as this was one of the days that they were able to observe at Buso-Buso till morning because the weather partially cooperated with them.

 

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M4 Globular Cluster in Scorpius

by James Kevin Ty

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M13 Hercules Globular Cluster in Hercules

by James Kevin Ty

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73/P Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann Fragment B- 00:51 AM

by James Kevin Ty

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73/P Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann Fragment B- 01:40 AM

by James Kevin Ty

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73/P Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann Fragment C in Hercules - 01:51 AM

by James Kevin Ty

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73/P Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann Fragment C in Hercules - 02:12 AM

by James Kevin Ty

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NGC 5139 Omega Centauri in Centaurus

By Brian Davis

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M57 Ring Nebula in Lyra

by Brian Davis

 

 

 

 

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