Part I - Eta Carina Nebula and Omega Centauri :

Our group left the Alabang gasoline Shell station a little apprehensive because of the hazy sky conditions but we remained excited since this could be the first ALP stargazing under the dark skies of Caliraya this year. We arrived at the site at about 6 PM and noticed that Allen and the first ALP group to arrive had already set up their scopes for their own personal Messier marathon.

After a quick dinner, the rest of the group didn't waste any time in setting up their equipment at the observing site beside the fishing pond . As usual, the imaging guys like James and myself were the last one to finish their preparation. I made the mistake of trying my new guidescope setup in the field for the first time and struggled with the unfamiliar equipment. After wasting about an hour and a half of precious imaging time, I wisely abandoned my efforts and reverted back to my old imaging setup. At this point, heavy dewing was already apparent and I promptly installed my homemade dew heater.

I started by imaging the great Carina nebula (NGC 3372) now low in the southern sky. My f/6.3 system can only accomodate a part of this huge nebula complex, actually the largest nebula in the sky, so I centered my image on Eta Carina itself and the keyhole nebula. The image below is a stack of seven (7) 1 minute images processed in MaximDL (stacking and DDP) and Photoshop.

Below is a close-up of the supermassive star Eta Carina and the Keyhole nebula. Notice the red blob of nebulosity around Eta carina which is called the "Homunculus". It got its name from its resemblance to the body of a man on close-up views, and represents the shell of gas expelled when the star exploded in 1841 and it briefly became the second brightest star in the sky. Eta Carina promises to have an exciting future, since its mass of 100x our sun makes it a candidate for a supernova explosion.

After imaging the magnificent Eta Carina, I then turned my attention to another beautiful DSO, Omega Centauri. I have imaged this spectacular southern globular cluster before last year but I simply could not resist doing it again. The image below is a 91 sec total exposure using my Celestron 8 inch SCT at f/6.3, Canon EOS 300D at ISO 1600. Processing was done in MaximDL (DDP) and Photoshop.

 

 

Part II - Jupiter at Caliraya:

Caliraya, as a dark sky site, is usually reserved for DSO imaging. However, I still decided to image Jupiter since it was scheduled to present a magnificent early morning show. At about 1 AM, Io would have started its shadow transit on Jupiter's following limb and would have ended in about 2 hours (3 AM). Shortly after, Ganymede would be occulted at the preceding limb at about 3:26 AM while the GRS would be transiting the CM.

I started imaging Io's shadow transit at 1:04 AM. Seeing at this time was good at 6/10 (better than my best seeing at QC!) but there was intermittent atmospheric haze resulting to an initial fair transparency at 3-4/5 before deteriorating at about 3:30 AM. Here are my first images of the start of Io's transit:

Io's shadow transited the CM at about 2:11 AM. The two images below also show Ganymede on the left side.

Looking at the details on the images above show the GRS rising on the following limb. I can clearly see the four SSTB spots as well as the long white oval bar in the SSTB as shown by Chris in his recent images.

However, I noticed some new developments in the NEB which was not seen before in my previous images. I don't know if this is significant but there are two small white congruent spots above and to the right of Io's shadow. Also, there seems to be a gray spot adjacent to Io's shadow just below and to the right. It seems to be continuous with the base of the festoon on the right of Io's shadow. However, it does mimic a "double-shadow", albeit much less darker than the actual shadow of the satellite.

The image below shows Io's shadow about to exit the preceding limb. The gray "double-shadow" is still visible.

Below is an animation of the entire shadow transit consisting of 21 frames and lasting for 2 hours (1:04 AM to 3:04 AM PST).

As our first Caliraya ALP stargazing activity for this year, our March 25 - 26 trip was a resounding success. Everybody went home satisfied and raring to go back on the next trip.