You can only pick 1?

[Moonshane]

Saturn for me too but the moon is a close second. surprisingly I find people are often impressed by double star systems.

[Ags]

Jupiter, nothing else comes close.

[Astro Imp]

No contest. Saturn. It runs RINGS around everything else..

Dave

[John]

Well Saturn is the obvious answer to us but I reckon many non-astronomers would say "nice but isn't it tiny !" which is a comment that many newbies make on 1st seeing the ringed planet through a scope. SO that might dilute the "wow" a bit.

I think a very impressive object, or objects, is the double cluster in Perseus knows as the "Sword Handle" and also AKA NGC 884 + 869.

At 50x these objects fill the field of view each having many tiny stars including some with strong colours. The fact that each pinprick of light is a sun and the clusters lie around 7,000 light years away reinforces the scale of the view.

[Talitha]

If i wanted to merely impress someone, i'd show them Saturn.

But if i wanted to lure them into becoming a eyepiece-addict, i'd definitely show them the Moon.

[Collyer911]

a lot of saturns but the first planet i ever looked at was jupiter and to me it was a humbling goose pimpleing!!?? moment,

i,ll never forget it so i think i,d show most people this when its in the sky...

[harriri2000]

BTW i vote saturn, the moon you can see with your eyes (unless you're really myopic/blind) but saturn someone tells you it exists, but you cant see it unless you look through a scope...that's what i'd go for.

Banner I love you reason "because someone tells you it exists" and that is why we all do this

[ZEbbEDY]

The moon

Even looks good during daylight

[WolfsPride]

I would pick other than Saturn and pick the Sun. Saturn as gorgeous as she may be is too motionless for me. The Sun on the other hand lets off Bursts which I could watch for hours upon hours on end

[harriri2000]

I have never observed the sun...Whats it like?

[Demonperformer]

I have never observed the sun...Whats it like?

I don't think anyone in the UK ever has. It is reported to be a bright yellow thing that is supposed to appear in the sky every so often, but I don't believe a word of it:D

[harriri2000]

I don't think anyone in the UK ever has. It is reported to be a bright yellow thing that is supposed to appear in the sky every so often, but I don't believe a word of it:D

Lol:D

[harriri2000]

Guys I have now done another thread carrying on from this on that now has a Poll, so now lets see what the best object is.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Jupiter shows more detail, Saturn does have a wow-factor. The double cluster in Perseus is better in a wider-field instrument. M42 is also great.

[bish]

Saturn or the moon has to be it. I made the mistake of showing my girlfriend a galaxy through my new scope. She wasn't impressed.

[Superewza]

Moon or M42, i have to agree that Saturn is beautiful, but might be a bit disappointing for people as a first time object if they were expecting massive close ups like you see in them text books - "Why not just google it?"

[Ad Astra]

is bigamy still illegal?

Lads, lads! Brush up on your gravitational theory a bit, will you? Any good astronomer knows that trinary systems are inherently unstable - one of the three always gets ejected after a short time.

LaPlace proved that the three-body problem is impossible to solve in a Newtonian system, and LeMaitre reconfirmed the results in Einsteinian - Minkowski space. Don't know who LaPlace and Minkowski were fooling about with, Mrs. Henderson got huffy when I asked and told me she "Wasn't that old!"

By the by, my vote depends much on what scope I'm using, but Saturn is definitely #1, followed closely by watching sunrise change the appearance of craters on the lunar terminator. (sunrise on another 'planet' always wow's 'em!) Orion's nebula comes in a close 3rd, and gets bumped to the top when using a large Dob.

Dan

[Pete Presland]

saturn

[MorningMajor]

When I showed my wife Jupiter, it go a coo - Saturn obviously got a wow but when i pointed to that vague smudge (to the naked eye) which is Pleiades and she then saw hundreds of stars burst into life through the scope she really went WOW!!!

Don't forget those clusters guys

[AlexM]

Jupiter with its moons get a good 'wow'. Seeing another planet with stuff orbiting it fires the imagination.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Jupiter with its moons get a good 'wow'. Seeing another planet with stuff orbiting it fires the imagination.

All the surface detail and seeing the planet rotate during the evening/night is also great.

[Telrad]

I would show them Saturn, as I have done - and from experience they have been impressed! Secondly, the moon.

[Rob L]

Got to be Saturn ... never yet encountered anyone who hasn't had a WOW moment when they first see it.

My wife just shrugged her shoulders and walked off, mind you she is an accountant so that might explain it

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

My wife just shrugged her shoulders and walked off, mind you she is an accountant so that might explain it

My wife's response is often: "Nice, it's cold, I am going inside", and the nice comes out REALLY enthusiastically

[26Left]

I judge how spectacular an object is by how much my teenage son swears when he sees it for the first time through my telescope.

The Beehive Cluster got a mild curse. Saturn got a bit of profanity. But, you should have heard him when he saw Jupiter!