Amazing summer night (mostly) naked eye

[kilix]

Hello,

I want to share my feelings of the amazing night of observing I experienced last saturday.
So, it all started when I took my SkyMax to my grandparents' house, one cousin, grandma, my mom and two aunts wanted to see Saturn, so I finally yielded to the year-long pleas

I aligned the GoTo using Arcturus and Polaris, then onto Saturn, which was really nice. For me, nothing new, but Saturn is stunning no matter how often you view it.

For the audience, it was (I believe according to all the "WOWs" and "OOHs") a remarkable experience. Of course, I did not spend much time at the eyepiece, but the conditions seemed to get better every passing minute, from a shaky image, barely any details visible at 100x, we soon ended with steady image at 160x magnification (2x barlow and 18mm BCO). The conditions improved in about 30 minutes significantly. I've managed to see the darker north pole of the planet and also the often elusive Cassini division. But again, as with everything with astronomy, once you see the Cassini division and you know what to look for, it gets easier to spot next time. The night was very warm at about ~22°C and the air was steady, with no air movement whatsoever. A plan for a solo observing session started brewing in my mind.

After about an hour of steady traffic at the eyepiece, I packed the gear and went home.
At home I started the realization of my plan - I made a night's lodge at the terrace behind my house, took the SkyMax out, did not bother with alignment, put in lowest power EP (Meade plossl 32mm) and got totally lost in the vastness of the Milky way. A larger bottle of beer also helped to fine-tune the experience After about 30-40min, when my eyes completely accomodated to the darkness, my brain could barely comprehend what it is looking at. Thousands of stars popped into the eyepiece and after each movement of the scope, it took my brain at least 5 seconds to fully comprehend the view. I do not know how much time I spent there just scanning around the Milky way and I could not care less. I did not search for anything specific, I did not have any observation plan (as I have most of the time), nor did I look for any Messier objects. I tried to see the Veil nebula thou, but no success, even with my UHC, no results.

After a long while, I felt my eyes getting tired, so I lied down to sleep, but well, I was wrong. No sleep was coming because naked-eye view was perhaps even more stunning then the view through SkyMax. The Milky Way seemed to shine almost as if it were a cloud being illuminated by spotlights. I've never seen it like this before. Dust lanes were clearly visible, the dark gap between Deneb and Sadr was obvious, the glow of the Galaxy was such, that I was half-expecting a car to pass behind my house (cars passing produce similar lighting effects above the roof of my house). The 4th magnitude stars of the delphinus constellation seemed as bright as Betelgeuse or Vega during normal nights.

I don't know how long I kept staring naked-eye at this, but I think, that I spent at least 3x as much time gazing naked eye than looking through the telescope. I came to the realization, that I really have a good life, when I can spend a night under the stars with a scope and a beer and thoroughly enjoy myself, with all the day-to-day worries and insecurities of life almost completely erased from my mind. It was almost a meditation, that evening.

So, that's about it, I mainly write it here so I can return to this report after a year or so and resurrect the feelings later.
I know it's not the standard type of report with bags of Messier objects observed and double stars resolved, but this is what I like about astronomy the most - there is no proper way to do it - if you enjoy it, you're doing it right.

[Stu]

Lovely report Kilix. Don't worry, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes (actually more often than you think) it is much nicer just to stare up at the skies and enjoy the view, rather than mess around with scopes and limit yourself to a narrow field.

Low power, widefield binoculars are also great for this, just lie down and look up!  

Your skies sound like they are pretty dark!

[davyludo]

That sounds like an awesome experience. I was out on Saturday night doing some observing and ended up spending some time scanning about the milky way with a low power eyepiece - just absorbing the views. No Messier hunting during that time, just enjoying. 

[Littleguy80]

Great report  I had a good time recently showing my 8 year old son and his best friend Saturn and Albireo. It's good to remember to just look up at the sky with just your eyes. I've had lots of nice little moments spotting ISS passes or meteors by taking a minute to look up from the eyepiece, all of which would have been missed otherwise.