Leonids with Saturn, M42, and M41

It's been awhile since I went out with my org-mates to observe the night sky. On a whim, I decided to go to the public observation of the 2010 Leonids Meteor Shower at the PAGASA Astronomical Observatory Sundeck. It was already 10pm and I was only browsing through the Facebook profile pages of family and friends anyway. So I thought to myself, "why not do something more productive like socialize, right? I mean socialize with real people who move in the real-world."

I've been to a lot of meteor shower observations already so I wasn't as psyched about the observation per se. I was more excited to see who else was going. :) My plan was to stay for only an hour though, two hours tops.

I was there until 4AM!

The night turned out to be more fun than what I had expected. Although I didn't see a lot of old faces and didn't really get to acquaint myself with the new ones, I had the pleasure of meeting Copernicus--Erika V.'s 8" Sky-watcher Flex-tube Dobsonian.


Although I didn't get to see a shooting star (what the heck, right?!?), I got to marvel at Saturn and deep sky objects M42 and M41.

SATURN


M41


M42


As usual, seeing these objects gave me chills. And there I thought none of them could surprise me anymore since I've already "gotten used" to seeing these heavenly objects. Yeah, right...

It was a great night. Not only did we get to observe beautiful objects we also got to talk about a lot of stuff--our dreams and our passions. :) Ad astra per aspera indeed! It was totally worth the puyat.

Here's a shot of the sky just before dawn. This lovely shot was taken by Erika V.


How I wish I brought my camera with me.

Lesson learned: Celestial objects, stargazing, astronomical observations will never seize to amaze me.

How dare I think otherwise?