June 2, 2013 ALP Monthly Meeting Report
by James Kevin Ty &  Christopher Louie Lu

Last June 2, 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 and son Kendrick Cole KC Ty ; Secretary Christopher Louie Lu, directors Edgar Ang and John Ray Cabrera ; Mike Enage, Ronald Sison, Justine Mae Garcia , Marlon Monzon , Mark Vornhusen & wife Aileen Vornhusen, Norman Marigza, and Bel Pabunan.

Meeting proper started at around 3:30pm with ALP president James Kevin Ty introducing the 2 lecturers for the day namely Nathaniel Custodio & ALP Secretary Christopher Louie Lu.

First lecturer was ALPer Nathaniel Custodio who share his DSO imaging as well as image processing skills entitled "DSO Imaging with DSLR with Tips & Techniques in IRIS Software Processing."  He started out by introducing the DSLR as one of the most commonly used consumer camera that is both easy to use as well as handle.  He also touched on the pros and cons of the DSLR compare to the dedicated CCD astro cameras.  He then gave good pointers on how to start image acquisition and what correct procedures needed to get  yourself a nice deep sky object (DSO) image for you to be proud of.  He then touched on some basic procedure on how to get started with an astro image processing software called IRIS.  He has a scheduled Part 2 on July monthly meeting to discuss further on how to set the basic settings on IRIS software.

This was followed by ALP Secretary Christopher Louie Lu gave an interesting lecture on " Relating to Strings."

This talk is made to feature what is to be the next step in particle physics, String Theory. It is a proposed yet unproven theory back in the 1970's, redefining our understanding of particle physics. It states that particles that made up atoms are composed of 'strings' of energy that vibrates and resonates in different ways to create different kinds of atoms.

Our current understanding of our universe is explained by two concepts. the Theory of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The goal of String Theory, is to unify these two concepts as a single, simple equation that will encompass everything we see (or do not see) in our universe. However, this idea of a unified 'Theory of Everything' has became the 'holy grail' of particle physics simply because there is not enough evidence  to prove its validity. According to our current understanding, String Theory can only work with an additional 6 dimension and a particle that has 0 mass and a spin value of 2. 

Albert Einstein, during his final days, tried his best to solve this problem. Unfortunately, he passed on before he could. Today's generation of Theoretical Physicist is now on a race to unify the Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. With the help of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, the answer to this problem might not be too far away.

ALPer Nathaniel Custodio gave an interesting lecture entitled "DSO Imaging with DSLR with Tips & Techniques in IRIS Software Processing."

ALP Secretary Christopher Louie Lu gave an interesting lecture on " Relating to Strings."

Lastly, ALP President James Kevin Ty  inform the members of the organization's plans to come out with its 10th year anniversary Souvenir Yearbook and encourage memebrs to submit their articles and images for use on the planned yearbook which will come out this September in time for their anniversary party. The meeting ended at around 6:30pm.