March 9, 2016 ALP TSE Palangkaraya Report - Day 4 (Eclipse Day)
by James Kevin Ty
Images by James Kevin Ty, Jett Aguilar, Alberto Lao, Allan Renan Acosta, Christopher Louie Lu, Felipe Uygongco, Fung Yu

Last March 9th, ALP Total Solar Eclipse Palangkaraya Team composing of ALP President James Kevin Ty, VP Jett Aguilar, Secretary Chrisopher Louie Lu, members Renan Acosta, Edwin Gatia, Alberto Lao, Felipe Uygongco and Fung Yu woke up early at around 3:00am and prepare themselves to go up to the roof deck and setup their equipment. The sky was partly cloudy initially as they were setting up but after 30 minutes, I hard rainfall suddenly poured down on them after they setup their cameras and scopes so they had to cover up their equipment with trash bags. The rain only stopped at around 5:00am IST and they start to wait for sunrise at around 5:31am IST. Unfortunately, there is a presence of  thick clouds that is covering the entire horizon thus they missed out the sunrise as well as first contact at 6:23am IST :(

It was only around  6:24am IST that the Sun peered through thin  clouds for us to be able to get a shot of the partial phase which shows a small nip by the Moon at around NW section of the Moon! The Sun  played hide and seek with the thin clouds until around 7:10am IST when a very thick cloud started to cover the Sun and this really caused a great concern on the observers as the dark clouds was huge in size and almost covered the entire sky until around 7:22am IST when the Sun showed its final partial phase of about 10% through small openings before it totally covered the Sun! :(  As the time passed going to 2nd contact at around 7:29am IST, all hopes of seeing totality is almost nil as all of the eclipse viewers were treated with  a constantly diminishing light until mid totality when the entire sky was like one can see during after sunset  with cloudy sky :(  It was not that dark as expected as this eclipse only lasted about 2m 30s .

At around 7:30am IST, a very small hole in a small thin cloud area passed through the Sun thus enabling James to see a small hint of totality coming out of the small thin clouds and he shouted to the team members to start snapping their cameras and videos on the area!  Unfortunately, the small thin cloud opening did not totally let the entire Sun come out and they were only able to view totality at half disk which shows the inner corona as well as the chromosphere and some bailey's beads before the 3rd contact diamond ring flashed out of the Moon's edge at arund 7:31:27 IST signaling the end of totality :(  For James, all was not lose as they were still able to see some of the totality features that he thought would not had been observed on the last minutes of totality so nevertheless, he was still thankful for the great experienced which was later agreed by the team members.  Oh well, can't win them all as they say....  As the partial phase starts to gets bigger as the Moon moves out further away from the Sun, only the ALP TSE Palangkaaya team members were left in the roof deck to continue to document the eclipse till about 8:30am IST before the thick clouds totally clouded out the rest of the  partial phase leading out to 4th contact which was estimated at 8:47am IST.

The group then had their traditional group shot taken together with Luwansa Hotel management specially their ever supportive management led by general manager Harry Saptadi for providing all the team's requests during their stay there at their beautiful hotel. I highly recommend their hotel when you drop by in the beautiful city of Palangkaraya! The team would also like to thank their supporters specially Canon Marketing Philippines (CMP) as well as Cutting Edge and Ideal Vision Center for their great support.  Thanks also to ALPer Arnel Campos for helping make the ALP TSE2016 banner.

The group then had their late breakfast before going back to hotel room to spend time processing the eclipse images as well as get some rest. ALPers Edwin Gatia and Fung Yu went ahead of the rest of the group as they booked their flights a day before the rest of the group will depart from Palangkaraya to Jakarta en route to Manila.

In the evening, the rest of the eclipse team had their dinner at the hotel's restaurant and discuss the results of the eclipse experience as well as looking forward to another eclipse chasing experience in the USA next year but this is still in the works.

ALP TSE2016 Palangkaraya team members seek cover under the concrete roof siding from rain.	ALP TSE2016 Palangkaraya Banner & Philippine Flag.
Rains continue to pour hard till around 6:00am IST.	ALPers ALberto Lao and Felipe Uygongco sets up their cameras and waits for eclipse to start.
ALP TSE2016 Team Leader James Kevin Ty inspects member's setup prior to start of eclipse.	Everyone awaits for first contact.
ALPer Renan Acosta relaxed as he waits for cloud clearings :)	ALP TSE2016 Palangkaraya Team Leader James Kevin Ty makes final focus adjustments and calibrations before start of eclipse.
ALPer Alberto Lao aimed his lens to the Sun to lock tracking mode.	ALPer Felipe Uygongco posed beside his eclipse setup.
ALPer Jett Aguilar posed beside his eclipse setup.	Local news people interviews ALP TSE2016 Team Leader on his thoughts of the just concluded total solar eclipse.

Diminishing Light

Temperature / Humidity Readings

Below are images taken by ALP TSE2016 Palangkaraya Team :

Main Image	Imager	Notes
	James Kevin Ty 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17	Images taken using Canon EOS 5Ds DSLR on Canon EF300mm f/2.8 L lens with EF 2x II teleconverter set at 600mm f/ 8  mounted on Kenko Sky Memo-R mount. Full documentation of his eclipse images can be viewed at http://astrophotophils.com/images/160309tse_palangkaraya.html
	Jett Aguilar 1	Images taken using Canon EOS 6D DSLR on Borg 77ED refractor with Canon EF 1.4x II teleconverter set at 700mm f/9 mounted on Kenko Sky Memo mount.
	Christopher Louie Lu 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9	Images taken using Canon EOS 450D DSLR on Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens set at f/5.6 mounted on Vixen Polarie Star Tracker.
	Alberto Lao 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10	Images taken using Sony Alpha A6000  mirror less camera with Sony AF500mm f/8 mirror lens mounted on Vixen Polarie Star Tracker.
	Allan Renan Acosta 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7	Images taken using Fuji XE-1  mirror less camera with Opteka 650-1300 f/8 zoom lens set at 650mm f/8 mounted on Vixen Polarie Star Tracker,
	Felipe Uygongco 1 , 2 , 3 , 4  , 5	Images taken using Nikon D3s DSLR camera with Nikkor AF70-200mm f/2.8 with 2x teleconverter lens mounted on Vixen Polarie Star Tracker,

Group Shot

Jump Shot

ALP TSE 2016 Palangkaraya Team with Management of Luwansa Hotel Palangkaraya

Jump Shot Again !!!