International Observe the Moon Night

September 6, 2014
In celebrating the event “International Observe the Moon Night”, the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and BS-Astronomy Technology students conducted a lunar observation at RTU - Boni Campus quadrangle. The observation team was headed by Ms. Pauline Pearl Divinagracia and Mr.
Miguel Artificio, who were assisted by the 5th year OJT students, Jhoana Marie Tabios and Andrew Bayot. Other astronomy students were also there to help in conducting the public observation.

We started the observation by 6:00 PM PST. The sky condition was perfect by the time we started, with 0% cloud cover. We used 3 telescopes for this observation. The 10-inch newtonian reflector telescope, a 6-inch newtonian reflector telescope on a german equatorial mount and a 3-inch refracting telescope.
The lunar observation was attended by BS Astronomy students, and College of Arts and Science students and other students from various courses. A Natural Science instructor Ms. Rubelyn Narra invited her class to also participate the observation. While observing the moon, the observation team also showed the planets Mars and Saturn to the students which amazed them on how beautiful these planets are.

The nightsky has been perfect for moon observation until the clouds started forming at around 8:00 PM. We took advantage of the remaining hour for further discussions regarding the moon and nightsky observations. The troupe started packing up at 9 PM.




For more information about "Inomn (International Observe the Moon Night)" go to their website observethemoonnight.org/

Here are some of the pictures taken by the observation team during the observation.

Prepared by: Jhoana Marie Tabios, Andrew Bayot and Miguel Artificio

Image Reduction and Analysis Facility Lecture for B.Sc. in Astronomy Technology students

Image Reduction and Analysis Facility or simply IRAF is an astronomical software used mostly by professional astronomers for their research. Basically, the program is used for data reduction for further efficient analyzation. The three major tasks that can be done using IRAF are astrometry, photometry and spectroscopy. The lecturer was Sir Frederick B. Gabriana, participant from 2012's SOKENDAI Winter School- Exoplanets where they used IRAF to find an exoplanet in one of their activities.

Sir Bamm sharing all his knowledge about IRAF to Astronomy students.

Sir Bamm explaining the details of a FITS file.

ZHR Computation

May 6, 2014                                                             Rizal Technological University

The summer's lecture series continued with a lecture entitled ZHR Computation. The talk was given by Sir Frederick (Bamm) Gabriana, the Distro Astro developer. Distro Astro is a Debian-based Linux distribution now growing its recognition in the astronomy community here and abroad. The audience are from incoming 2nd year B.S. Astronomy Technology students to incoming 4th year students. A report from one of the audience will be followed.

Detailed derivation of the Observed Hourly Rate (OHR)

ZHR formula together with a graph on how IMO plots the data gathered from people around the world.

Sir Bamm on explaining the difference between watching an event and observation.