April 7, 2013 ALP Monthly Meeting Report
by James Kevin Ty

Last April 7, members of the Astronomical League of the Philippines (ALP) held their monthly  meeting at Manila Planetarium.  Members who attended were ALP President James Kevin Ty , wife Charito and son Kendrick Cole KC Ty ; Secretary  Christopher Louie Lu ,Ma. Belen Pabunan , Liza Quitlong , Ronald Sison, Mark Vornhusen and wife Arlene Vornhusen ; Per Edman & son Oliver Edman;   Gary Andreassen & wife Irma Andreassen; guests amateur astronomers Nolan Smith from Canada & Patrick Schmeer from Germany.

Meeting proper started at around 2:00pm with ALP President James Kevin Ty welcoming ALP's 2 foreign amateur astronomer guests to their monthly meeting.  This was followed by James' workshop lecture on  using AutoStackkert 2, Registax,  CCD Calculator and Deep Sky Stacker.  He started with explaining the pros and cons of using AutoStackkert & Registax in stacking, aligning and processing astro subjects such as Sun, Planets and Moon.  He gave the members some tips and tricks on how to get started with webcam astrophotography.  This was followed by a short discussion on how to use Ron Wodaski's CCD Calculator and how to use available cameras and lenses to determine the actual field of view on your camera's image frame. He then proceeded with touching Deep Sky Stacker, an astro freeware that helps you stack your numerous deep sky images and merging them into a final noise reduced astro image.  He then touched on how to use basic techniques to do final image processing with Adobe Photoshop to make your astro image better.

Lastly, he invited members and guests to their planned April 13th Caliraya stargazing session as well as GAM 2013 SUNday free solar observation at Rajah Sulayman Park after the meeting.  The meeting ended at around 4:00pm.

ALPers and guests relaxed and waited for the meeting proper to start.	ALP President James Kevin Ty welcome members and guests to the monthly meeting.
ALP President James Kevin Ty tackles on how to use AutoStackkert 2, Registax, CCD Calculator & Deep Sky Stacker to get better astro images.	ALPers and guests took down notes so they can test what they learned from James' basic workshop lecture.