Your Biggest WOW! Moment?

[kirkster501]

I still love the Trapezium in M42 with the nebulosity around it. Marvelous.

Was also a bit blown away with M1, even though it is only a very indistinct smudge. But man, that's a star that blew up !!! Wow.....

[leemanley]

Biggest wow moment, looking up and seeing no clouds !!!! wins hands down each time, apart from that, M42, pleiades, moon, jup and saturn never fail to impress regardless how many times I view them.

[Hightower]

I see no reference to anything religious in his statement - only a scientific fact refering to the vastness of our universe. I also don't want to see religious statements on astronomy sites since we should keep such beliefs to ourselves

Not the tiny reference, but the insignificant could be interpreted as religious comments lol :-)

Edit: anyway, just a little tongue in cheek post - not meant to be taken too seriously, hence the use of smilies :-)

[noakesy]

i have 2 first saturn through my 200p/ leo triplet last yr at sgl6

[JamesF]

Not the tiny reference, but the insignificant could be interpreted as religious comments lol :-)

For clarity, you shouldn't. I won't have any truck with sky fairies or invisible friends. By "insignificant" I meant that we could disappear entirely tomorrow and for all our self-importance as a species it would have no impact whatsoever on the rest of the universe.

The sheer scale of the cosmos and the amazing "stuff" it contains is something I find utterly awe-inspiring. How can you not go "wow" when you look at something, anything, using little more than a few bits of ground and polished glass, knowing that the light you're seeing has travelled uninterrupted since, for the sake of argument, the time when dinosaurs walked the Earth?

James

[swamp thing]

Was also a bit blown away with M1, even though it is only a very indistinct smudge. But man, that's a star that blew up !!! Wow.....

You wait until you see the veil neb in all it's glory.

It's almost unbelievable to think that something that large in the sky comes from one star that exploded thousands of years ago.

Regards Steve

[JamesF]

You wait until you see the veil neb in all it's glory.

It's almost unbelievable to think that something that large in the sky comes from one star that exploded thousands of years ago

One day people might be saying that about Betelgeuse

James

[hobbesy]

We were lucky enough to spend a week last summer at SunStarFrance with Olly from round these parts. We saw so many amazing things it's impossible to list them all. The highlights were seeing Andromeda with the naked eye and of course Jupiter.

[Double Kick Drum]

Some obvious.... Jupiter, Saturn, M42 etc

Most recent..... "Wow, I didn't think the Owl nebula would be as bright as that!"

...and best of all are all the multi-galaxy fields of view. "Wow, there are galaxies all over the place!"

[perrin6]

The edge on galaxy NGC 4565 in Coma Berenices is always a wow moment when the sky is transparent and any bright galaxy in which I can see detail such as M82 through a 12 inch+ or the spiral arms of M51.

The moon always astounds me especially when at high altitude. through an 8 inch or bigger with a high contrast eyepiece the moonscape is just fantastic especially at the terminator. It's just teeming with debris and I can almost taste the powdery dust.

[Photohound]

The first-light WOW for me and my first little 'Tasco' scope years ago was on a sunny saturday afternoon...

set it all up and focussed on the farthest thing i could see...

an air-con unit on the roof of a tower block about a mile away

made me go wow though - i could see the rivets holding the hinges on the doors!!!

(things have got better since then)

[Jinx]

For me it has to be M35 through my 9mm 100 degree ES on my 10" skywatcher - 2-300 stars filling the views from side to side and a real sense of depth. Every time I go out to observe I usually make it one of the first 3 targets - despite telling myself not to!

[rowan46]

hale bopp over birmingham in 1997 I never understood why everybody in the the world wasn't watching the skies during those months and It amazed me how many people never noticed it till I pointed it out to them.

[Nexus 6]

hale bopp over birmingham in 1997

must have been something to see.

If there was one event to see during a lifetime, a bright comet must rank up there with the best of them.

sadly, I had no interest back then in astronomy, no doubt it would have been travelling right above my head and I was none the wiser!

[ArmyAirForce]

Here's a snap I took of Hale-Bopp with an automatic 35mm film camera.