Most Enjoyable (Special, etc.) Astronomical Moment

In an attempt to generate some on-topic material: What is your most
memorable, enjoyable, special, etc. astronomical moment?

It's difficult for me to pick a single such moment, but among my most
memorable would be the 1979 total solar eclipse, the auroral 'storm'
of March 1989, the Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 impacts on Jupiter, and a
fantastic naked-eye view of Comet Hyakutake stretching across the
night sky. I could easily add more, but I'll stop here and look
forward to reading your own special moments.

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.

wrote:
In an attempt to generate some on-topic material: What is your most
memorable, enjoyable, special, etc. astronomical moment?

It's difficult for me to pick a single such moment, but among my most
memorable would be the 1979 total solar eclipse, the auroral 'storm'
of March 1989, the Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 impacts on Jupiter, and a
fantastic naked-eye view of Comet Hyakutake stretching across the
night sky. I could easily add more, but I'll stop here and look
forward to reading your own special moments.

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.
Seeing Saturn hang in the sky looking like a child s toy.
It beats even the most beautiful photograph.

Nothing beats a total eclipse, and 1979 was spectacular (Marysville, WA
above the Columbia River), but the fantastic aurora display over the
Stellafane convention in 1972 ranks up there.

Howard Lester

1997 In an attempt to generate some on-topic material: What is your most
memorable, enjoyable, special, etc. astronomical moment?

Thanks for asking.

Tied for first: Seeing Saturn at about 48x in my Teleview Pronto, looking
solid and 3-D as a Christmas tree ornament, and finding Uranus in
binoculars, confirmed by its movement over a few days.

2. Hyakutake Comet (my first comet!), just a snowball from my urban
apartment parking lot; a few days later watching it move through circumpolar
constellation, seemingly within hours.

3. Comet Hale Bopp, with a seven deree tail, above a stalled freight train
after sunset in Benson, AZ, and for weeks before and after that in the
Chicago suburbs in fall, winter, and spring of 1997. Hated to see fade away
like an old friend...

4. My first colored double stars through a telescope: Gamma Andromeda and
Alberio.

5. Finding Mars in binoculars within a few degrees of the Moon when seeing
was so poor, Sirius was the only other star I could see.

Steve

Seeing the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Earth and the Moon
all lined up on 2-19-1999. I have a photograph somewhere.........

Cathy
Diamond Bell, AZ

There have been a lot of them, but for me, the most memorable was one of
the most mundane. I was in the process of learning the "real"
constellations, as opposed the the "personal" ones I'd discovered
myself, and I noticed the Pleiades on a chart in Menzel's "Peterson's
Field Guide." I suspected it was the cloudy little patch I'd come to
call "Nebraska," and I studied a photograph, memorizing the pattern of
stars. Then, I went out into the back yard with my father's old 7x35
binoculars, aimed them at the little patch, and BLAM!!! THERE THEY
WERE! THE PLEIADES, JUST LIKE IN THE PICTURE! They were beautiful,
hanging there, just like in the picture, surrounded by dark sky...
I've never forgotten that moment, and I've been hopelessly hooked
for more than 40 years...
Marty

On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:32:33 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

In an attempt to generate some on-topic material: What is your most
memorable, enjoyable, special, etc. astronomical moment?

I think the most exciting moment for me was watching M51 appear on a
screen the first time I aimed a camera at the sky. I still get echoes of
that every time I image. Visually, it had to have been seeing Saturn for
the first time, as a kid. Seeing Hyakutake covering 1/3 of the sky also
remains very strong in my memory.

I agree with others about the impact of solar eclipses (I've seen
three), but I don't really think of them as astronomical events, more
like Earthly natural wonders.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

wrote:
In an attempt to generate some on-topic material: What is your most
memorable, enjoyable, special, etc. astronomical moment?

It's difficult for me to pick a single such moment, but among my most
memorable would be the 1979 total solar eclipse, the auroral 'storm'
of March 1989, the Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 impacts on Jupiter, and a
fantastic naked-eye view of Comet Hyakutake stretching across the
night sky. I could easily add more, but I'll stop here and look
forward to reading your own special moments.

Tough call. First thing that comes to mind is seeing Venus and Jupiter
in a single telescopic field of view in or around 1999. Another one is
watching the Mercury transit through a hydrogen-alpha telescope. One
memorable though not particularly amazing sight was observing Jupiter
under cloudy skies yielding a limiting magnitude of -1 (!): Jupiter
itself was barely visible to the unaided eye. But telescopically, it
was surprisingly accessible. One mo Seeing the green flash (it
lasted quite a while--a couple of seconds, actually) over the marina in
December 2005.

Nice question.

--
Brian Tung
NOTE: Below addresses changing soon...
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

wrote:
In an attempt to generate some on-topic material: What is your most
memorable, enjoyable, special, etc. astronomical moment?

It's difficult for me to pick a single such moment, but among my most
memorable would be the 1979 total solar eclipse, the auroral 'storm'
of March 1989, the Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 impacts on Jupiter, and a
fantastic naked-eye view of Comet Hyakutake stretching across the
night sky. I could easily add more, but I'll stop here and look
forward to reading your own special moments.

Bill Greer
To sketch is to see.

Great subject. Here are a few I can think of, all great memories:

Viewing M51 through a 16" from a very dark site, magical!

Guiding the same scope while taking photometric readings for hours while
the temp dropped WAY below zero F (-15 to -20 as I recall).

Driving through Wyoming in the middle of the night, spotting the aurora.

More driving: to find a clear spot on the Colorado plains to view the
'99 ('00?) Leonids. Found clear sky near Akron, for a spectacular shower.

Comet Hyakutake. Sublime (the adjective, not the verb, although if it
weren't for the verb...)

Spectacular close conjunction of a thin crescent moon with Venus (late
70's). Venus was right at the end of the crescent.

The darkest skies I've ever seen in Marble, CO about 20 years ago and
Marshall pass near Gunnison, CO a couple years ago. There the winter
Milky Way looked as spectacular as the summer Milky Way from most sites,
then my car got stuck in the snow :-p (used the floor mats under the
wheels to escape, good trick to remember).

Shawn

jerry warner wrote in
:

snip all

Ditto on the Leonids 2001, but it's too hard to choose. It usually the
last exciting object that I looked at. No shortage of those. - Canopus56

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