whats your 3 most fav objects in the sky

[Drop Of Sun]

One and two are easy for me, first is the Sun by some margin, then the Moon, and three is close between Orion Nebula, Saturn, Jupiter, M51, M13, the double cluster, and several others!

I could get by on Sun and moon alone, they are really convenient, nice and big, very familiar, friends and family can relate to them of course, they have such a big impact on our daily lives and I love that I can feel the sun as I observe it (well apart from in frozen winter!) though I would miss all those lovely other targets.

[Pathfoot]

These are great questions, because they have different answers every week. And they give us a chance to reminisce over our favourite moments in astronomy.

It may not be as exotic as some, but the stellar sight that still give me such a buzz is the Plough. Plain old Ursa Major. As a boy, I read avidly every book on astronomy I could find, loved the pictures of celestial objects and constellations, the rings of Saturn, glowing gas clouds, the sheer size and drama of it all. I lived in a built up area of Glasgow, so dark skies were relatively rare, and this was in pre-Clean Air Act times. Fogs. Intense sodium street lights that made the clouds seem to glow orange by themselves. I had great difficulty identifying constellations, by which I mean, I couldn't identify any at all. Partly, it was not having an idea of scale, partly the poor seeing conditions, and partly having no one I knew who was at all interested or familiar with it, to set me out. So all of my astronomy learning was from books and pictures.

One day, my family moved house, to a larger place, about a mile or so away. All our things were packed and transported, and on the evening of that day, I was walking away from our old house, over the small field I used to play on, and I looked back at our old house in the distance. And there I saw it. Hanging high above the roof, like it was on invisible strings, the Plough, suspended and gleaming like seven diamonds. In all of half a century of stargazing, it is my most memorable and most thrilling moment. 

Once you have the Plough, of course, you have everything else in time. But my second favourite sight is an arrangement of stars that I now know belong to a constellation I didn't back then. It was in the days before I first recognised the Plough. I'd been to the house of an old school chum, Lawrence, and we'd been out riding our bicycles during the day, then 'fixing' them late into the night. I set off home, well after midnight (this was in the days when being out after 7pm wouldn't result in search parties), pushing my bicycle because I'd 'fixed' it unfit for riding, leaving me a three mile walk. I looked back towards Lawrence's house, and high in the sky, I spotted an arrangement of three stars, with a fourth some distance perpendicular, and it looked to me like a short longbow at full stretch. I thought I'd discovered Sagittarius, but when I got home, and consulted my Popular Star Atlas, it wasn't anything like Sagittarius. If only I'd know what to look for ... But in the explorations that followed the discovery of the Plough, I at last recognised it as the Belt of Orion, with Rigel. And now, whenever I see Orion, I look at the Belt, and Rigel, as though they were a constellation-within-a-constellation, and think of my old friend Lawrence, who died many years ago, far too young.

It's the Moon of course. How could it not be the Moon, after all those books and maps and pictures, and the object I turned my first ever telescope to? It was a cardboard-tubed refractor with a 38mm glass and a fixed eyepiece on a wobbly drawtube, and that was when I discovered the trickiness of inverted images, and how trickier it was to compensate for sidereal drift upside down. Not to mention that, all my learning of strange new words having come from books and not TV, 'sidereal' was not pronounced   sid'-er-ee'-al. The full Moon was a disappointment of glare, but crescents and quarters, that's when it came alive! When you're fourteen, you can be a schoolboy Galileo!

My fourth celestial favourite? Patrick Moore. As a boy, I devoured his books avidly, especially the Guide to the Moon he wrote with H.P. Wilkins, and even his science fiction storybooks. He was the voice of astronomy, such a cinderella scientific pursuit in those days, and it's hard to imagine the state of present-day amateur astronomy without his influence and enthusiasm. There's been no one like him since, and from my boyhood days, the only other writer who has come close in inspiration was Leslie Peltier. 

[xtreemchaos]

thats a great description of your Favs Pathfoot, i too was influenced by Sir Pat, i watch my first sky at night at six, and never looked back "just up". thanks for posting  charl.

[Astro Imp]

Great post Pathfoot, I well remember the great man's Guide to the Moon. SPM has had a massive influence on our hobby, probably greater than any of us realise.

[laser_jock99]

1) The Sun.....not a lot would be happening on this planet without it.

2) The Moon....fundamental to the evolution of life on Earth also.

3) Clouds...they give us rain, again essential for Life.

[iPeace]

My top 3 would be Earth (it's in the sky as well, and a nice place to live), Sun and Moon (which both enhance #1 in practical ways - our previous poster beat me to it!)

[Bart]

 

Have to be Jupiter, it's so different from one time to another. GRS, transits, multiple transits etc

orion nebula, just beautiful  

blue snowball/cats eye neb//M81+82/Markarians Chain

Ok, I cheated, sorry