February 9, 2009 ALP Penumbral Lunar Eclipse Observation Report
by:  James Kevin Ty
Images by Jett Aguilar & James Kevin Ty

Last February 9, 2009 , members of the Astronomical League of the Philippines (ALP) setup their telescopes at the roof deck of PAGASA Observatory in UP-Diliman to observe the Penumbral Lunar Eclipse. Among the members of ALP who were present that evening were ALP President James Kevin Ty, ALP VP Jett Aguilar, Vincent Lao, Fred Pascual, Francis Sarmiento and Antoinette Icot.  Antoinette, also an Astro student in Rizal Technological University (RTU) in Boni Avenue were joined by her classmates namely Frank Kelvin Martinez, Rhyan Coronel, Pauline Pearl Divinagracia. Miguel Artificio and Ma. Angela Lourdes Lequiron.  Aside from the, members of the local TV stations ABS-CBN 2, GMA 7 and UNTV 37 were there as well to cover the event.

They arrived at around 8:00pm and started to setup their telescopes to observe and image the penumbral lunar eclipse that was to start at around 8:36pm PST (Philippine Standard Time).  Unfortunately, the sky was overcast and it was not until around 9:45pm PST that the Moon peeped  out of the thick clouds to show its glory.  At that time, the penumbral Earth shadow was almost not visible but through the cameras, the subtle shading was clearly noticeable.  Below are 4 sequence shots taken more or less 30 minutes apart to show the subtle penumbral shadows:

9:46pm PST	10:15pm PST
11:11pm PST	11:38pm PST

It was a cat and mouse affair the whole event with the Moon coming in and out of the thick clouds covering the entire sky!  Nevertheless, ALPers as well as members of the media waited patiently during the entire event and was blessed with some good views during the event.  After 11:00pm PST, many of the media people had departed the site with only ALPers staying further till 12:00am midnight before packing up their stuff.  It was a happy session as imagine having 2 successive eclipse events in more or less 2 weeks! :)

For more penumbral lunar eclipse images taken by ALPers, please click here.

For more activity images taken by ALPers during the penumbral lunar eclipse event, click here.