The Astronomical League of the Philippines held their monthly meeting on March 2 at the Manila Planetarium at 3:00pm.  The meeting were attended by James Kevin Ty, Angie Tan,  Bel Pabunan , Edgar Ang, Jett Aguilar, Alice Villa-Real, Rich Pijuan, Peter Benedict Tubalinal, and new members Rodney Jovin Velasco, Michael Manriquez, Jaizel Valerie Pilapil and Vincent Lao.

ALP President James Kevin Ty then recap the successful National Astronomy Week (NAW) that was celebrated last February 17-23 at the  SM Science Discovery Center (SDC) in SM Mall of Asia.  He thanked the members of the society for helping make the event a memorable one. Afterwards, he touched on the initial planning for ALP 5th anniversary annual book that will include the history , activities as well as the achievements of the organization since its creation way back in 2003.  He told the members, he will call for a board meeting for the directors to plan on it in the days to come.

Since there are many new members and beginners that joined the ALP from the just concluded NAW, James  then decided to give them a short crash course on how to navigate the night sky using a star map as well as using constellation Orion as key constellation finder in locating nearby constellations using the stars of Orion.  James use the Planetarium's projector to simulate the night sky in real time.  After his short lecture, he invited new member Rodney Velasco to point to him which stars are to be used to locate the constellations and he did fairly well to locate them.

ALP Observation chairman Peter Benedict Tubalinal then give a lecture and orientation on the upcoming 2nd ALP Messier Marathon that will be held on April 5 at Caliraya, Laguna.  This event will again be open to anyone interested in joining the event.  This is more for the enjoyment of trying to locate as much Messier objects as one can locate from dusk till dawn.  Full details will be posted in the ALP webpage in the days to come. Last but not the least, members who were at the meeting give a short discussion on how to got started in astronomy. The meeting ended at 5:30pm.

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For Comments jkty@astroleaguephils.org