July 4, 2010 ALP Monthly Meeting  Report
by James Kevin Ty & Armando Lee
 

Last July 4 , 2010, members of the Astronomical League of the Philippines (ALP) held their monthly meeting at the Manila Planetarium at 3:00pm.  Members who attended were ALP President James Kevin Ty  , Charito Ty and son Kendrick Cole (KC) Ty, PRO Armando Lee, Myra Lee  and son Jason Lee, Andrew Ian Chan,  Treasurer Henry So, Vincent Lao,  Christopher Louie Lu , Dennis Buenviaje, Rommel Palacpac, Kevin Dagunan, Jomar Lacson, John Ray Cabrera and  Nel Lagda .

The meeting started at around 4:00pm with ALP President James Kevin Ty introducing ALP PRO Armando Lee as well as the 4th part of astro lecture on the Milky Way entitled Galactic Archaeology. He touched on the aspects of how theories about our Galaxy’s formation are tested. He mentioned that there are three important sources of detailed information that we use in making theories about the history of our galaxy: the ages of stars, the chemical composition of stars, or metallicity, the location and orbits of the stars, or kinematics. He showed how metallicity is measured and how it is compared to our Sun, how it is used to form theories about the formation of clusters of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and also how the orbits of individual or group of stars in the Milky Way galaxy gives clues to their possible origin and place of formation within the galaxy. He ended the presentation by summarizing:

1. By looking at the range of metallicity and color of halo stars, it’s possible to place an upper limit on how many dwarf galaxies could have accreted onto the Milky Way.

2. In the evolution of our Milky Way galaxy...once the halo had formed there was a rapid phase of star formation that created the halo of our galaxy, and left little gas behind out there; then something must have stopped or slowed the star formation for a while, to allow some of the gas to settle into the disk of our galaxy that we see today.

He then announced that the coming topics of the next months’ lectures will deal more about astrophysics; particularly in the latest developments in the studies being made with the Large Hadron Collider and its significance in Modern Astronomy.
 

ALP PRO Armando Lee gave an interesting lecture on Galactic Archaeology.

ALP President James Kevin Ty summarized the astro events that ALP were able to observed and images during the month of June as well as tackle on the 5th ALP 9 Ball tournament which will be held this July 18th.

Afterwards, ALP President James Kevin Ty gave a summary report of the June 13 Comet McNaught recovery by ALPers James Kevin Ty and Andrew Ian Chan at the dark skies of Caliraya, Laguna. The the June 26 Partial Lunar Eclipse was tackled by James and he summarized all the eclipse reports and images made by ALPers.  Most of the Manila based ALPers were clouded out in the first half of the eclipse duration and were able to get good images after around 8:30pm onwards,  Visayan based ALPers Ted Gonzaga and Raymund John ANg were able to start imaging the eclipse an hour early because of clearer skies.

He then discussed on the upcoming July 18, 2010 ALP 5th 9 Ball Tournament that will be held in Playdium Bowling and Billiard Center in Quezon City. Participants who have already commited to participate are lead by 2008 Champion Andrew Ian Chan together with Aldrin Palacio, Romel Palacpac, Babak Parhizkari, Henry So, Edward Eli Tan and James Kevin Ty.  ALPers who still want  to participate in this event should contact ALP President James Kevin Ty for further details pertaining to this event,  Registration fee is P700.  Trophies will be given to the top 3 participants.

Lastly, the 2nd ALP Bowling tournament which will also be played in Playdium in the month of August (exact date will be announced next meeting) was discussed, Among the early participants are James Kevin Ty, Andrew Ian Chan, Edgar Ang, Melisa Bata, Rommel Palacpac, John Ray Cabrera, Armando Lee, Myra Lee, Rich Pijuan, Christopher Louie Lu, Micky Natividad and Charito Ty. Members are encourage to join either or both event as these activities are for our group bonding as well as have fun and relax during the rainy season.  Competition is only secondary so join the events. 

The meeting ended at around 5:30pm.