White collar crime doesn't pay in the USA!

For tonight's topic on our talkshow on Straight from the Sky, we bring you a topic worthy of the title of our talkshow as we literally talk about looking at the sky! Tonight we have the honor and the privilege to have with us, Mr. Christopher Go, a Cebuano planetary imager and an amateur astronomer and member of the Astronomical League of the Philippines, Inc. (ALP) who became an instant celebrity when he discovered another red spot in Jupiter last Feb. 24, 2006. It is now called "Red Spot, Jr." Last April, his discovery was validated by two teams of Astronomers using the famous Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and because of this, he has become a familiar name to Astronomers around the world. Proudly, he is the only Cebuano I know who has been granted permission to use the HST.

Last Saturday evening, Chris invited me to his residence in Ma. Luisa Estate Park where I met his fellow astronomer, Mr. Tomio Akutsu who has a business at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) but whose passion is also astronomy. We were given a thrill of a lifetime watching the planet Jupiter using his Celestron C-11 Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope mounted on an AP-900 equatorial mount and a DMK21BF04 monochrome camera from its optical lens and when he transferred it to his digital camera, Jupiter comes out bigger in his laptop computer. He also has taken photos of Saturn, Mars, the Moon and yes, including the Sun and its spots and solar flares!

You would probably think that you needed to go to those far-flung and high-tech observatories in order to be able to see the planets clearly. But as we learned from Chris Go, you can do it right here in Cebu... of course with the right equipment the cost of which is to say the least... astronomical!

However for our readers who wish to look at the stars here in Cebu, the cheapest way to go stargazing without punching a hole in your pocket is by going to the website of Astronomical League of the Philippines (ALP) www.astroleaguephils.org or if you wish, you could look at the photos taken by Chris Go in his website, http://astro.christone.net/ or if you go to Google, you can type his full name and enter the various websites on astronomy. So watch Cebu's newest world sensation tonight on SkyCable's channel 15 at 8:00 p.m.

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I watched with keen interest the breaking news on CNN last Friday morning, which announced the conviction of Mr. Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling the top executives of Enron Corp. the Houston-based 7th largest corporation in the United States, which collapsed way back in April 2001. This is America's biggest corporate scandal to date and it has yielded the biggest fish of a conviction, sending ripples into the spines of CEO's who may have been planning to gyp their shareholders blind, bringing their own corporations and their own employees into the brink of bankruptcy.

Kenneth Lay was found guilty on all counts ranging from wire fraud, making false statements, securities fraud and conspiracy, while Skilling was found guilty on all 19 counts and both could end up with long prison sentences. Indeed, crime does not pay in Corporate America, where we've seen other corporate scandals like World Com and Tyco becoming celebrity trials.

Hopefully, these celebrated white-collar crimes should give our own corporate executives food for thought... that they shouldn't monkey around with their investors. My favorite one is Negros Navigation (Nenaco) whose executives have been publishing handsome profits in the newspapers early this year and eventually, the truth came out that these were only paper profits... the truth is, their corporation is very much in the red. These are the kinds of corporate officers who should be tried in court for fraud!

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Another calamity has struck Indonesia just as it was just getting back on its feet after the great tsunami in December 26, 2004. This time, close to 3,000 people have died due to a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Yogyakarta, which is not far from Mt. Merapi volcano... which many people thought should have erupted by now. Because of Yogyakarta's nearness to Mt. Merapi, it is safe to assume that this earthquake may have been triggered by the magma acting up beneath the volcano's belly.

Meanwhile, we in the Philippines have all to thank God for keeping us from calamities (except the one that happened in Guinsaugon, So. Leyte) and even the dreaded bird-flu virus that has already struck close to fifty countries. I'm sure that once more, this new calamity would present a new opportunity for the United States military to go out in full force to help the stricken Indonesians. Right now, the USNS Mercy hospital ship now in Zamboanga City, on its medical mission. I'm sure that this vessel might just be pulled out of Zamboanga and sent directly to Yogyakarta.

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