Kudos to Mr. Chris Go on another Jupiter find!

Tonight’s special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we talk about the problems Cebu has been having with our water resources. We all know the phrase that “Water is Life”. Thus without water, no life on earth would exist. It is a fact that our astronomers in search for other worlds are seeing new planets and new worlds in the cosmos, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope. But decades now, these scientist must have seen thousands upon thousands of planets, moons or stars, yet they still have to see one with water in it.

This can only mean that we only have one earth to live on, hence we must take care of Mother Earth. But are we doing our share in helping make thing better for our environment? I doubt it. Water is a precious resource, but here in Cebu, we only start thinking about conserving our scarce water resources during summer when the heat dries up many wells. This particular summer, we really got a beating; for the first time in close to a hundred years, the Buhisan Dam dried up.

Thirty years ago, Fr. Herman Van Engelen S.V.D. told Cebuanos that the seawater intrusion had already reached P. del Rosario St. along USC. Then a few decades later, it already reached Mango Ave. and today this is now nearing the Provincial Capital along Escario St. This only tells you that we Cebuanos, despite the fact that we’ve been forewarned that this would happen, did not do anything to stop or at least slow the sea water intrusion deeper into Cebu City.

Instead, our urban planners have continued developing Cebu into a concrete jungle where rain water which used to seep into the creeks and crevices and go deep into the aquifer is instead washed away over concrete and asphalted roads back into the sea. Cebu needs open areas that would allow rainwater to seep back into the aquifer. So, when will Cebuanos really sit down and say enough already and do something about this problem?

This is what our guest, Archt. Socorro Atega, Executive Director for Cebu Uniting for Sustainable Water Foundation, Inc. (CUSW) will be discussing on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00pm. Let’s not wait until our wells dry up.

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Talking about the Hubble Telescope, did you know that the only Filipino I know who is allowed a certain time to use the Hubble Space Telescope in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is Mr. Christopher Go, Cebu’s Planetary Imager? A few years back, Chris Go found another Red Spot in the planet Jupiter. The Scientific Community acknowledged his discovery and dubbed his find as “Red Spot Jr.”. Even more remarkable is that, Chris Go made this discovery in the comfort of his home in Maria Luisa and not from a huge space telescope from high up in the mountains.

This only shows that Cebu, being close to the equator, has a distinct advantage over the other places where space telescopes have to be located in distant areas far and away from city lights, a distraction to telescopes. I learned about this after I had Chris Go as guest on my show. We went to his house to see Jupiter and the moon in all its splendor.

Lo and behold, last June 3, Chris Go did it again. He had his telescope on planet Jupiter and had a live video recording of what turned out to be a comet hitting Jupiter’s surface. Meanwhile, an Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley also had his telescope trained on Jupiter and witnessed the same occurrence. These two amateur astronomers validated each other’s discovery. It was a hit in the scientific community and made international news.

On July 16 to 22, 1994, the whole world watched, thanks to CNN and BBC, when for the first time ever we witnessed two solar bodies collide. This is now known as the Comet Shoemaker-Levy (named after the astronomers who discovered it) where a string of comets impacted onto the surface of Jupiter and left a gaping hole on its atmosphere. I don’t know if the comet that hit Jupiter had a name. Congratulations to Chris Go. You make us Cebuanos proud!

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It was quite a unique bash that the Shangri-Las’s Mactan Resort and Spa presented to Cebu’s glitterati last Friday night at the Ocean Pavilion for the global launching of their brand campaign. Many with cable tv may have already seen this ad, where a man got lost in the wilderness at the height of a snowstorm. He got surrounded by wolves, but the cold gets him down. You’d think that the wolves would pounce on him but on the contrary, they laid down and surrounded him and kept him warm. Then Shangri-La presents their message, “There is no Greater Act of Hospitality than to Embrace a Stranger as One’s Own. It’s in our Nature!” This reminded me of famous legend of Romulus and Remus, a She-Wolf that gave the beginnings of the Roman Empire. Kudos for a great ad from the Shangri-La!