[OR] Quick After Work Visit to IE’s Place Near San Ramon (2026-01-15)
Joel Lee
Hi Everyone,
This is an OR from a quick visit to IE’s (Infinity Engineering’s) place near San Ramon.
I took up the offer from IE on one of the threads asking if anyone was going out last week and figured I’d go visit to see the location. His location is rather close by and if it ended up nice, would’ve been a nice close location (for a quicker evening). I was originally going to bring my imaging gear but I underestimated how much time it takes to pack my stuff so I grabbed my C6R, 10x42 binos, ragdoll, and eyepieces and threw them into the car and drove off. I picked up one of my friends along the way to IE’s place.
Arriving at IE’s place, for me, it was quite a bit darker than my backyard and places I’m generally at. There’s no direct light sources shining on that spot. The only illumination came from the light pollution overhead. My Unihedron confirmed that it was a bit darker than I’m used to at 19.3 mag/arcsec^2 which would correspond to Bortle 5~6. At this level, it might be worth it going for some IFN. It was a chilly night without any wind. Based on the site style, I’d presume there usually isn’t that much wind there.
After taking in conditions, I proceeded to set up my mount. I brought along my newest mount, the Ragdoll 20 Pro, since IE mentioned being interested in mounts with a capacity of 20-30 kgs. This mount easily handles the C6R without any counterweights while being in a decently small package. However, of course, the hand controller did not work so I had to resort to phone control for the mount. Since, I’m rather inexperienced with using the mount without imaging plate solving, finding objects took a little bit of effort. IE had a list of targets he wanted to look for which was great since I usually go without a plan and think about it later.
Object List:
Saturn: The ringed planet was just over the trees and looked decent at all powers. I only have up to a 12mm eyepiece and forgot to bring my other 2x barlow so the highest power I had was 1200x2.5 / 12 = 250x. Saturn was steady with the rings edge on. My friend told me he thought Saturn really popped out at him at 250X and loved the view. This alone made me think buying all this visual gear was worth it.
M 45 Pleiades: We were originally looking for Uranus first but I could not figure out how to align my mount and navigate well so I went here first since it was nearby. In my 10x42 binoculars, the Pleiades looked as beautiful as ever. Shining blue jewels on a dark background. Through the 55mm ~ 22x but with a much larger aperture they seemed similar albeit more blue.
Uranus: I had a pretty hard time finding Uranus since it did not seem to be where stellarium was telling me it was. I eventually found it by alternating powers and figuring out one of the light sources was not staying sharp. At 250x Uranus was a very small blue green dot with a largish blue halo (from my optics).
Jupiter: As bright as ever through an eyepiece, Jupiter at 250x was steady. The 4 main moons were visible in the 10x42 and at low power on the scope, it was a great straight line view. Despite the planet being rather steady, I could not really resolve other banding detail at 250X aside from the main orange bands. This could be my eyes, the poorly corrected optics, or the seeing at higher altitudes.
Alnitak/Flame NGC 2024/Horsehead Barnard 33: This was the last target IE had on his target list for the night, specifically the Horsehead nebula. Unfortunately, I do not own an Hb visual filter so I knew this was going to be very difficult. Slewing to Alnitak, I unfortunately could not resolve the flame let alone the horsehead. Alnitak was as bright as ever though and M42 along the way was a nice bow shape.
NGC 2392 Eskimo Nebula: After the attempt on the horsehead, it was up to me to select targets. I decided to go with a host of different object types and started with a planetary. I remember when Mark showed me the blinking planetary and how exhilarating it was to watch it blink in and out and wanted to share that with the Eskimo Nebula. At lower power, I had quite a hard time identifying it until I accidentally saw it out of the side of my field of view. Just like the blinking planetary, it was doing that blinking action as you move your eyes around the FOV. At higher powers, it stopped doing that and was more obvious. Unfortunately, it was still mostly a fuzzy without much definition.
M 81 and M 82: Next up is this famous pair of galaxies. The pair were two fairly large fuzzy objects. I could not resolve much detail beyond the fuzzy nature of the two.
M 79: It is currently not globular season but I managed to find this on stellarium and eventually in the scope. Unfortunately, this was another faint fuzzy. Unlike the galaxies though, I think I could resolve that it was not entirely uniform with some separate stars.
M 1: Lastly was this brilliant supernova remnant. Unfortunately, despite it being rather bright, I could not find the object for the life of me.
With this, my friend and I had to go. Next time, I’d need to come up with some double stars, carbon stars, and other planetaries to look at. Overall, it was a great time out with IE. We had great conversations about the objects we viewed, the location, and each other.
Thanks for reading. This is my first OR as I primarily image and I just look for random objects/go chat with others while the rigs are working. C&C welcome!
Ted Hauter
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Joel Lee
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Ted Hauter
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