Biggest surprise

[thing]

Seeing the Auriga clusters for the first time, they are still my favourite clusters.

[Baskii]

I agree about the '98 or '99 Leonids (never can remember which it was). I was expecting little white streaks, like the few meteors I'd seen up to that point. Instead, the very first thing I saw when I stepped outside to look was a dazzling blue-green fireball!

Other than that, my biggest surprise was also my biggest disappointment - the Double Cluster. When I first had a look at it a year or two ago I recall being really underwhelmed by it. Maybe the seeing was bad, or maybe I was just looking in the wrong place, but it wasn't the gem that I'd been led to expect.

Skip forward to last night, and I had just finished setting up my long-awaited telescope pier in the back garden and was trying the scope on it for the first time. Feeling pleased with myself, I was idly scanning around the sky when I happened across the Double Cluster. Suddenly the entire field of view was full of tiny blue pinpoints, punctuated by a few of startling orange. It was a breathtaking view, a real "wow" moment and made me realise what I'd been missing!