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Whats been your most dissapointing astronomical moment?

beamer3.6m

By beamer3.6m
in The Astro Lounge

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beamer3.6m

beamer3.6m

Posted
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We have all, no doubt, spent an age trying to find an object only to be dissapointed with the result.

So the question is what has been your biggest dissapointment in astronomy.

However, I do not mean having spent £500.00 on a scope only to find it reduced etc etc, but actual observable objects which have dissapointed you.

Mine would be M31 - it's just a smudge (I know through photography it is so much more but that is not the point of this question.)

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John

John

Posted
Posted

The cloud cover at Marazion, Cornwall for the 1999 Total Eclipse - I'd been waiting 25 years for that event :crybaby:

There was a great atmosphere and the sky did go very dark but I'm told that a total eclipse under a clear sky is a totally unforgettable experience so I'll have to save up and go and see one somewhere else in the world I guess.

To a much lesser extent I always find M1, The Crab Nebula rather dissapointing even with a moderate aperture scope.

John

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Whippy

Whippy

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When you're a beginner, apart from a couple of exceptions most nebulae and galaxies are pretty disappointing through the eyepiece in a modest scope.

Mars is probably the one for me though, at least Jupiter has an excuse being pretty low atm....

Tony..

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centroid

centroid

Posted
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For me, without doubt, it will be if its cloudy on Saturday night. :lol:

Having travelled over 10,000 miles to the other side of the world, been invited to a 'star camp' out in the Australian 'bush', I'll be somewhat 'gutted' if its cloudy. :lol::D

Unfortunately, according to the forecast, there's a good chance that it will be clouded out :) .

Just hoping they've got it wrong!!

Dave

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Tiny

Tiny

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My worst and best object are one and the same - M31.

I first saw it with the naked eye in a town 50 years ago and was totally taken with the thought of the light coming from that huge galaxy to be a smudge in my sky having travelled for 2 million light years.

Since then if the beast is in the sky I know where it is a can see it even if the seeing is bad. (Is this imagination?)

M31 is also my most annoying object for with any scope I have looked through, while other galaxies become galaxies rather than not being visible at all, M31 stays a smudge - a bigger brighter smudge granted but I feel the least it can do is to live up to its photos when I look at it through a scope!

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NickH

NickH

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M31 for me...spent years as a kid looking at those immense pics and then saw it through an ETX90...

kind of realised at that moment that if that, being the brightest and biggest galaxy out there looked like a grey smudge, then most of the others would too..

Always wished the mags would show images which actually do look like what you see at the EP..this month's AN is the closest so far in trying to do that

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stefski

stefski

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I think that most galaxies for me are a bit disappointing. Most look like a variation on the 'smudge' theme, even with 11inch aperture. Even when sketching and trying to 'tease out' any detail, the only 'mottling' I've noticed was a blurry (poor seeing) darkening on M82 (is it it 81, I never remember, I mean the needle shaped one).

I like nebulae and clusters so I'm always disheartened when I can't make things out, e.g. cocoon nebula, bubble.

The winner (or is it loser?) for me is defo galaxies!

Stef

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Astronut

Astronut

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I would have to agree with jahmanson above.

I'd been waiting all my life for the 1999 total eclipse and planned the trip down there months in advance. I hired a motorbike (XJ900) for a couple of days to beat the traffic and what a good idea that was. I'd bought 2 rolls of film, a solar filter and adaptor for the camera, a tripod, a big telephoto lens, etc, etc and travelled down to Prawl Point (the southernmost tip of Devon) for the event. When I got to Devon early morning, the sky was a deep blue with a few scattered clouds and I was very excited. I found myself a great spot in a field above the cliffs with a great view out to sea and got ready for the big event.

Before the partial phase started, the clouds rolled in and stayed for the whole event and surprise, surprise, the clouds partly broke up not long afterwards on my way back home. I managed to get one or two shots of a 50% partial phase through the thickening cloud before totality. Totality occured and it was like a dimmer switch had turned down the daylight which was eerie and what made me laugh even though I was totally p**d off was the thousands of camera flashes going off for miles around (what did these divvies expect to see?).

The icing on the cake was chatting to a couple of bikers and their girlfriends at a service station on the motorway on my way back north and they'd been in Newquay. They saw the total phase through a lucky break in the clouds and they'd only gone down there on a whim after all the hype in the media.

This totally bummed me out.

UK weather - don't you just love it :)

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Tiny

Tiny

Posted
Posted

M31 for me...spent years as a kid looking at those immense pics and then saw it through an ETX90...

kind of realised at that moment that if that, being the brightest and biggest galaxy out there looked like a grey smudge, then most of the others would too..

Always wished the mags would show images which actually do look like what you see at the EP..this month's AN is the closest so far in trying to do that

But without those flash images how many would be stargazers now?

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Tiny

Tiny

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I would have to agree with jahmanson above.

I'd been waiting all my life for the 1999 total eclipse and planned the trip down there months in advance. clouds rolled in and stayed for the whole event and surprise, surprise, the clouds partly broke up not long afterwards on my way back home. I managed to get one or two shots of a 50% partial phase through the thickening cloud before totality. Totality occurred and it was like a dimmer switch had turned down the daylight which was eerie and what made me laugh even though I was totally p**d off was the thousands of camera flashes going off for miles around (what did these divvies expect to see?).

The icing on the cake was chatting to a couple of bikers and their girlfriends at a service station on the motorway on my way back north and they'd been in Newquay. They saw the total phase through a lucky break in the clouds and they'd only gone down there on a whim after all the hype in the media.

This totally bummed me out.

UK weather - don't you just love it :)

We were near Newquay - saw nowt as did loads of others spread across the countryside looking for a break in the cloud. Like your bikers we had one lot who had no interest in the Eclipse who went out and picniced a few miles away then returned in the evening to say 'O an Eclipse - is that what it was - we had the patch of blue sky and then the sun went behind a big round cloud - it looked really pretty!' I and a lot of others had been waiting and planning for years for that pretty sight and - nothing - TANJ

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John

John

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I was totally p**d off was the thousands of camera flashes going off for miles around (what did these divvies expect to see?).

My wife took a photo of the moon once and said that she hoped it would come out OK because she had used a flash.

I then tactfully explained that if she was using a flash powerfull enough to illuminate something a quarter of a million miles away NASA might want to know something about it .... :shock:

John

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ChrisEdu

ChrisEdu

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My wife took a photo of the moon once and said that she hoped it would come out OK because she had used a flash.

I then tactfully explained that if she was using a flash powerfull enough to illuminate something a quarter of a million miles away NASA might want to know something about it .... :shock:

John

LOL :) A bit like people using flashguns at concerts!

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ringz

ringz

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Travelling all the way to the big island of Hawaii in 1991 to see the longest solar eclipse of the 20th century and then being clouded out.

Then, after travelling much too far in a yellow school bus to the centre line, being told that those who stayed at the hotel saw it through thin clouds :sad2: .

All made worse because I only went because seeing an eclipse was on my bucket list.

However, it was all made better in 1994 when I went to Chile and saw the eclipse in the high Andes :occasion7: :occasion9:

--

Martyn.

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