You’d be hard pressed to find any event that isn’t already cancelled at this point thanks to the pandemic. I was supposed to be on leave this coming weekend to join in PAS’s (Philippine Astronomical Society) Corregidor Astro camp.

Funny story: thanks to my clumsiness and general inefficiency (when it comes to planning stuff), it took 3-5 attempts before I managed to deposit my reservation fee for the now-cancelled event. If you count the total $$ and time I spent, I’m sure it cost me more than the event fee to go to a bank that’s still open after work. I’m in no way blaming the org—it’s just me being extremely disorganized.

Oh yeah, speaking of PAS, I joined PAS last February, shortly after I stopped doing this daily blog. I saw the event via twitter and impulsively registered to the event (and joined the group at the same time). I’m ridiculously quick when impulsivity is involved, but unfortunately, the clumsiness doesn’t leave. On the day of the event, I learned that I only filled up the membership form and not the event form. When I got to the meet up spot, they couldn’t find my name in the list because technically I wasn’t registered. Luckily a few people backed out of the event and I was able to join the PASiLEAP camp.

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I knew about the Philippine Astronomical Society’s existence for a while now. I’ve been following some of their astrophotographer members since mid-2019, when I started doing research for the December 2019 Annular solar eclipse. I didn’t join back then because while I saw the registration steps, I didn’t see any upcoming event/s. I wanted to maximize the 1 year membership fee by being able to join on events, especially the PAS member exclusive events.

As someone who don’t go out often, I wanted to join PAS to be in the company of like minded folks: people who are aware of the current and future cosmic events, people who watch SpaceX rocket launches, people who understand the distance between the Earth and the Moon (it’s ridiculously far, but also very near if you take into account the size of the whole freaking universe).

I also want to learn about telescopes and astrophotography gear, specifically gear that would help me take photos of eclipses.

A total solar eclipse is the thing that actually makes the earth special—not being in the goldilocks zone, or not being the only planet we know of that has sentient life forms—it’s the lucky distance between us and our moon and sun. The moon is in the exact size, distance and orbit to exactly cover the sun at certain times (at least every 18 months). If there are alien tourists, THIS is what they would come here for, not our natural resources or our body’s innards.

If that fact didn’t wow you, it’s time to re-assess our friendship.