Your Most Memorable Observing Experiences

Well, I had plans to view from Mt Pinos on Friday and/or Saturday night but the current weather forecast is now for windy conditions on both evenings. :C
So, I thought I'd reflect on my most memorable observing experiences (and ask for yours):
1. Viewing the veil through Randy Hopkins 15" scope (Swayze mirror). Even the guy next to him with an 18" scope at the time at Pinos said, "That's a nice view!" Talk about filaments in a nagler!
2. Viewing the planetary nebula/cluster combination in Puppis through Don Pensack's 12.5" discovery with a nagler and paracorr. Definitely worth the price of admission!
3. Showing Borjn up at Pinos the monster galaxy in Sculptor and hearing him exclaim, "WHAT EYEPIECE IS THIS?!"
4. Viewing the Omega globular cluster dipping near the horizon at Lockwood valley.
5. Viewing the eskimo nebula through Oren's super compact 17.5" scope at an insane mega power and seeing the object take it!
6. Showing Floyd Blue the helix in my 16" at Pinos and viewing structure in it... through the clouds.
7. Viewing filaments in the structure of the ring nebula in a 25" scope equipped a collins electro-optical eyepiece.
8. Views of most objects through Kennedy's scopes at Pinos.
9. Digging out the central stars in the ring and viewing the horsehead under favorable viewing conditions.
10. Picking out the faint fuzzies from the observers guide and beyond.
11. Viewing Saturn for the first time.
12. Showing others Saturn for the first time.

Hi Rod,
Well there are so many so I will try to narrow my responses.
1)Seeing 9 moons around Saturn in one evening, including Janus, with my 10" f/6 Zambuto equipped Astro Sky Dob.
2) Looking at Jupiter with the Starmaster 14'5" and seeing the GRS with complete details, so that it seemed you were looking down inside of it at 550x, from my backyard
3)Seeing M-42 with Binoviewers on the same night with the Astro Sky and having to pry my friend off the thing after he said he had never seen such contrast.
4)Looking at M-57 through Steve Kennedy's 28" Dob at 1600x and seeing the smoke ring with filaments filling the entire FOV!
5)Seeing the Cat's Eye in Steve Kennedy's 32" Dob at 1500x and seeing all the details that made it look just like a cat's eye, no wonder it got that name.
6)Seeing the Dumbbell Nebula on a special night with a 14mm UWA and no filter and literally making my Jaw drop, with my 15" Collett scope with a Swayze mirror.
7)My first night out with my 14.5" Starmaster, just looking at everything I could find!
8)Splitting Sirius with my Meade 127ED APO from my backyard. 8O
9)Seeing the Double Cluster in my Meade 127ED APO with a Zeiss A-10 EP and seeing pinpoint stardust for the first time, where it really looked like sugar on black velvet.
10)Taking my first good photo through a telescope, where the details and color looked like something out of a magazine!
Let's hear your stories!

Attached Image:

Very nice topic, Rod!

Some of my highlights look decidedly underwhelming . . . but they are my highlights.

1. Seeing M66 in 10x50 binocular - the mere fact of seeing something 25 MLy away

2. Seeing Jupiter for the first time between the clouds in my 80mm acrhomat - two belts and the squished shape

3. Crux naked eye, Alpha Crucis and Alpha Centauri in 80mm

4. Markarian chain in 8" SCT (that's when my doubts about extraterrestrial life disappeared)

5. Eta Carinae nebula, naked eye and in 80mm

6. Saturn last spring in 8" SCT and 4" apo, seeing 10

7. Resolving a bunch of sub-second doubles in 4" apo in average seeing, their sheer beauty

8. Edge-on galaxies in Canes Venatici in 18" Obsession

9. Tarantula nebula in 500mm Zeiss RC

10. My whole trip to La Palma last September with Inge, Eckart and Tore - every single night was fantastic! But M33 and NGC 253 where the best

Dmitri

This is difficult. In recent years I had the opportunity to use moderately large telescopes with decent quality, and travelled to places with excellent observing conditions. Some of my best memories, however, I have from a long time ago when I was struggling with small scopes with meriocre optics and lousy mountings.

I'll never forget the first time I viewed Saturn through a 30mm scope with a fixed magnification of 20x and no mount. At that time (1963ish) Saturn was low in Capricoruns or Aquarius, and I could just support the telescope on the base of the window frame. This made the scope sturdy enough to get the first glimpse of the rings of the planet.

Later I was able to locate and split my first double star with the same scope on a home-made mount. Nu Draconis with a separation of 60" is hardly a challenge, but that time it gave me a real satisfaction and a feeling of achievement.

In the early 70ties I got a good UK-made 8-inch Newtonian. I remember first time I looked for M81 and found M82 (which I actually didn't know about at that time) first. I didn't make out half of the detail of what is possible with considerably smaller aperture, but the feeling of "discovering" this fine galaxy was incredibly satisfying.

In 1997 I was lucky to get clear sky during an unexpected shower of fireballs connected with the Leonids. The number of meteors were typically about 10 - 15 per minute, but many of them were bright enough to cast shadow, and one (which I failed to see because I was indside at the moment) left a trail that remained visible for 45 minutes.

The purchase of an 8-inch Portaball in 2000 gave new inspiration to me. At that time I also bought an O-III filter, and my first view of the Veil nebula with the filter is something I can't forget. Later I upgraded to a 12.5-inch, and made two trips to the Canary Islands with Tore, Eckart and last time also Dmitri. During the first trip Omega Centauri and M8 where the highlights. Second time the large Sculptor galaxy, NGC253 gave the most memorable sight.

Astronomy has given me much joy over a period of more than 40 years. I really look forward to the 40 years to come.....

Inge S

The 1966 Leonid Meteor Shower!!!

Eurika! Several nights were spent at least 1/2 hour and more trying to tease out NGC6946 from my light polluted back yard; much time was spent detailing star charts to insure that the location was precise, (the bracket stars were 12 minutes apart). Finally, a faint patch of gray was detected. Later, its presence was confirmed at a darker location, and some semblance of a spiral structure was viewed. What is more, I can now within a few seconds, find the location of NGC6946, whether it is visible or not. Another object indelibly etched into my memory. Tis the joy of a star hopper.

Hi Ron,

Interesting thread, here are my "top ten".

10: Seeing NGC 5128 with the naked eye for the first time.
9: Seeing shadows cast by the Milky Way in Sagittarius for the first time.
8: The carina Milky Way in 80mm binoculars. So many nebulae and clusters!!!!
7: NGC 3372 in a 17.5" telescope and a 20mm Nagler. The detail is unbelievable.
6: eta carina in a 17.5" telescope and 4.7mm Nagler. The homunclus(sp?) nebula really did look like a tiny person!
5: M83 in a 17.5" telescope and 9mm Nagler when close to the zenith.
4: My first total solar eclipse.
3: Comet Wilson March 1987. A naked eye comet in the same field as a naked eye nebula in another galaxy (NGC 2070) and in the same field as a naked eye supernova. When did that last happen!!!
2: Saturn through my 18" starmaster under perfect seeing!

And my all-time number 1....................

Comet Halley, Naked eye, April 25 1986. A night of full moon!

This might seem a strange observation for me to consider number one, however that night the moon was completely full... ie there was a total lunar eclipse that night. as the moon rose, it was so bright that very little could be seen of the comet. But about 2 hours after sunset, the moon began to disappear into the Earth's shadow. as it steadily became darker, more and more of the comet and its tail became visible.. it was like the comet was growing a tail! Then when totality finally came, the comet was high in the sky with a 35 degree plus tail gently curving past the eclipsed moon, which was lower to the horizon. it was like a huge curving sword in the sky with a drop of blood falling from the end!

Cheers

Maurice

October 2006 myself and friends used the 82 inch Otto Struve

http://www.as.utexas.edu/mcdonald/facilities/2.1m/2.1.html

http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2006/0220.html

telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas to visually observe 2003 UB313 among other things, such as M42. The view of the Trapezium through the eyepiece was very much like these images:

http://www.seds.org/messier/Pics/Hi-res/m42fullmosaic.jpg

http://www.oarval.org/DJOriTrpz.htm

If you crop this image, the colors and features are close to what I recall seeing. As everyone took their turn at the eyepiece, we call couldn't help but scream,"ooooooaaaaaaaaAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

The Eskimo nebula yielded like results

Something I'll never forget....

K. Michael M.

Getting up at o'dark-thirty in the morning, racing into downtown Atlanta with telescopes, setting up with a coworker atop of the helipad at a corporate headquarters, and watching a lunar eclipse before dawn. I remember looking over my shoulder and seeing Orion peeking around a nearby office buildling. It was like he was walking through the city.

Here are my top five observing experiences:

5) Attending the 1995 Winter Star Party in the Florida Keys, five fantastic nights of latitude adjustment and conducting observations of great southern deep-sky objects like the Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372), NGC 3532 (the best open cluster in the heavens), Centaurus A (NGC 5128), the Jewel Box, and the Coal Sack in t-shirts and shorts. The absolute highpoint was seeing Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) through Tom Clark's 36" f/5 Tectron Yard Scope and a 27mm Tele Vue Panoptic. The Gegenschein was visible and thanks to the WSP's renowned sub-arc second seeing we were able to observe Mars at over 900x. I saw Alpha Centauri for the first time through many telescopes and split Antares B for the first time through Barry Greiner's (of D & G Optical) 5" D & G refractor. B33 (the Horsehead Nebula) was a very easy target for the Yard Scope.

4) The 2002 Black Forest Star Party at Cherry Springs State Park in Potter County, Pennsylvania, was a wonderful experience. It was clear for a week (Uranus was easily visible without optical aid) and on the final night we were treated to a spellbinding auroral display. The transparency was remarkable that morning and I saw more color in M42 than ever before, the Horsehead Nebula without a H-beta filter, and plentiful nebulosity (NGC 1435) in the Pleiades.

3) Observing with the 30" Tectron at almost 7000 feet at New Mexico Skies for five nights in the fall of 2005. Highlights included seeing a number of bolides that illuminated the ground, the Double Quasar, IC 5148 in Grus, the globular cluster Pease 1 in M15, the Fornax Galaxy Cluster, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula (Van den Berg 142, also known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula) in IC 1396, and the devilishly difficult Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555), which was perhaps the toughest observation that I've ever made.

2) Using a 22" Starmaster at an altitude of 12,500 feet on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Bolivian altiplano in 2004. I worked through the entire AL Southern Skies Telescopic Club list and would have been the first to complete it had I bothered to send in my observations. Logging star clusters and HII regions within the LMC and SMC was a gas and viewing the great globular clusters Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) through the 22" at over 500x was a truly mindblowing experience. My friend Tony Donnangelo and I observed with David Levy on several of the nights.

1) Viewing the 1998 total solar eclipse through 10x50 binoculars and a newly acquired Orion ShortTube 80 from the forward deck of the MS Veendam off the coast of Aruba. This was an absolutely magnificent experience that is hard to describe in words. During the cruise we able to observe southern objects through binoculars and small telescopes (at low magnifications) from the stern, port, and aft decks at night. I had my first view of the Tarantula Nebula in the LMC during the cruise. My friend Kent Blackwell's Big Eyes giant naval binoculars provided spectacular views of the southern Milky Way and DSOs like the Coal Sack and the Pipe Nebula.

I've had many other great nights at places like Cherry Springs, Spruce Knob in West Virginia, Dolly Sods in West Virginia, the Stellafane grounds in Vermont, Anderson Mesa and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, but the above top the list.

Dave Mitsky