OI- Henry Coe

[Richard Navarrete]

I’m hoping to make it out to Henry Coe this Wednesday, March 11. Anyone care to join me?

Richard

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[David Kirjassoff]

Hi Richard,

I’d like to join, but will probably depart around midnight. 

David

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On Mar 9, 2026, at 8:18 AM, 'Richard Navarrete' via The Astronomy Connection (TAC) <sf-ba...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 I’m hoping to make it out to Henry Coe this Wednesday, March 11. Anyone care to join me?

Richard

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

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[Lance Pickens]

I’m going to try to make it out 

[Mark Wagner]

See you there.

[David Kirjassoff]

Richard, are you contacting the ranger about the gate?

On Monday, March 9, 2026 at 8:18:33 AM UTC-7 richa...@aol.com wrote:

[Mark Wagner]

Richard will contact them.  He's on his way up already.

[Richard Navarrete]

Ranger contacted, we’re good for tonight.

Richard

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[Frank Graham]

Quickly packing, hoping to beat San Jose traffic. I’ll see everyone up there. 

Frank Graham

On Mar 11, 2026, at 13:47, 'Richard Navarrete' via The Astronomy Connection (TAC) <sf-ba...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 Ranger contacted, we’re good for tonight.

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[Lance Pickens]

Had a work event pop up and I cannot make it tonight; I’ll catch everyone at the next Henry Coe meetup

Clear skies!

Lance 

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[Frank Graham]

With the naive notion of beating South Bay traffic and keeping my drive time under 1.5 hours, I left San Mateo at 2:30PM only to slog through 2.5 hours of accident induced traffic on CA-85 arriving at Henry Coe around 5pm with only a momentary stop at Vietasia on East Dunne Ave for an iced coffee for the night ahead.  After a round of introductions with Dave Kirjassoff, Mark Wagner and Richard Navarrete, I set up my 5" refractor with binoviewer only to begin my comedy of errors (forgetting my pier extension knobs and battery pack for my newly acquired Hopper plate solver).  Luckily I have redundant systems, so I just fell back on my mount's encoders and avoided objects directly overhead because of tripod legs interfering with my OTA.  While I was setting up, a few wild turkeys wandered up the hill, gobbling away.  Mark tried his hand at gobbling, fooling one tom to strut his feathers.  Once the turkeys realized it was Mark they stopped returning Mark's gobbles :)

After chuckling at my poor packing, I photographed Dave with his skillfully 3D printed DIY Analog Sky binoculars showing off a very cool 1980s color palette.  Those binoculars merged images extremely easily and presented objects with a strong 3D sense without resorting to gimmicks, more on my Lederman Optical Array (LOA) eyepiece later.  I'm still very much learning the night sky, preparing for Messier Marathons, beginning Sue French's Celestial Sampler (of course, RIchard was not the only one who left their copy at home ;-).   Dave introduced me to Collinder 62, a nice open cluster tailor made for binocular viewing.  I'm excited to learn another catalog of objects I can attempt in my light polluted backyard.

Dave also had a refractor set up with a cleverly integrated Pegasus Astro SmartEye.  In addition to its live rendering capability, it integrates to the mount, Sky Safari and mobile phone for keeping track of what was viewed, not to mention great for public outreach to share images.  Unlike earlier generation live stacking eyepieces that tend to feel like you're looking at a small LCD screen through a keyhole, the SmartEye definitely has a unique presentation.  As your eye approaches the eyepiece the center is sharp while the periphery has a strong coma with stars streaking radially, not unlike the Millenium Falcon going into hyperspace.  The key though is jamming your eye straight into the SmartEye upon which you sense the deceleration out of hyperspace and immersion in a field of now round stars to the field stop and the galaxy, nebula, etc in the center live stacking away, like you might see visually in a 32" telescope.  My 5" refractor presented M1 Crab Nebula as a faint, colorless blob, while the SmartEye after only a brief moment rendered M1's outer filaments with definite red tinges and the central core with hints of turquoise.  Most of the time I view in my backyard.  While I enjoy visually observing the moon, planets, double stars, and other bright objects, the SmartEye and no doubt future advancements in electronic assisted viewing may well hold me over in my light polluted skies until I can make it to a remote dark site.

Mark brought his 18" Obsession.  As we were chatting I noticed Venus to the west and somehow Mark spotted Saturn even lower on the horizon.  Mark is truly a visual guy with the object noticing skills to prove it.  As we waited for more stars to appear, we noted the good seeing and Mark shared views of Jupiter, beautiful to see many delineated temperate belts, crisp and steady above and below the readily apparent NEB and SEB, not to mention the festoons within the bands themselves and mottling in the polar regions.  18" aperture really has its advantages.

Richard brought both his 4" refractor and a 10" Dobsonian.  As the skies darkened, Richard shared a wonderfully sharp view of Orion's Trapezium with his 10" Dob at relatively low power, easily splitting the E and F stars.  I went back to my 5" refractor and picked up E relatively quickly but had to concentrate to pick out F near the much brighter C star.

As I was set up to binoview, I gravitated toward brighter Messier objects, mostly globular clusters and a few of the brighter galaxies.  I had a pair of LOA 18mm Deep Immersion eyepieces that employ a 3x3 array of square thin glass plates glued to one of the elements in one eyepiece, creating a 3D effect where you "move" an object in the FOV center into the foreground or background by rotating the glass plate enabled eyepiece.  Just to make sure I wasn't convincing myself there was an effect, I invited Mark to take a look and he confirmed that the wings of Orion were pulled high into the foreground leaving the Running Man in the background.  Richard, Dave and I really enjoyed that 3D effect.  However, on open clusters, you can perceive an "edge" to those glass plates as though spacetime was stretched like a tablecloth onto a square table seen from overhead, so better to use it on diffuse nebula where the edge is hard to perceive or on globular clusters or galaxies that fit within the central glass plate (i.e. the central 25% of the eyepiece FOV).

Around an hour after sunset, Cliff Horne arrived, bringing his 8" SCT.  I don't have a photo of Cliff (for some reason I didn't think a flash photo would be a good idea). The five of us wandered around  talking and sharing views among our scopes.  I learned a lot from Dave and certainly enjoyed the comparison of visual and live-stacked viewing.  I could hear Mark and Richard pushing each other as they pursued fainter objects with their larger scopes.  Very gentle but brief breezes would occasionally cool us down. Cliff left around 11pm as I recall, and Dave left at midnight when I intended to as well.  But, of course, I told myself to take one parting look at Jupiter, which by then under great seeing had become even more mesmerizing, especially with the Great Red Spot in plain view.   After getting my fill of Jupiter in my binoviewer, I finally left at 1am at the same time that Mark and Richard were calling it a night.  About that time a coyote pack in the valley was calling out to a coyote pack above us, presumably the two packs were placing dibs on our area for themselves to enjoy the night sky.  I envied them but I had commitments in the morning.  With hardly any cars on the road at that hour I was home in a little over an hour.

What a fantastic night of viewing under wonderfully calm and dry conditions, doubly great because I still don't have a power solution for my dew heaters :)

Thanks Richard, for motivating us with your OI.

Regards,
Frank

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[Richard Navarrete]

Frank,

What a great observing report! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up, and thanks for sharing views through your awesome gear. It was a fun night at Coe , and I hope you join us more often. It’ll probably take me a few days to write an observing report.

By the way, how did you manage to make Mark look so much bigger than his 18” Obsession? 🤣

Richard

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[Frank Graham]

Yeah, I noticed that too!  I even made his ladder look bigger than the 18" telescope lol

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[Mitchell Koerner]

Incredible report Frank! I was (and still am) a bit sad that I missed last night (I've been busy preparing for an in-town move this weekend), but reading through your report helped reduce the loss significantly! I'm glad ya'll had a nice night and hope to someday also view through Dave's smart eyepiece. He's always got such fun projects up there!

Thanks,

Mitchell

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[Philippe Fossier]

Very nicely done OR.

Always a pleasure to read them.

~ philippe

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