So far, what is the most dramatic, best moment in your astronomical life to happen?

[h0ughy]

That is probably a hard one to answer but I will attempt to do so for me.

A close second would be the Venus transit viewing that we had in Newcastle, the foreshore area was populated by hundreds of people and we had a live radio broadcast by ABC radio whilst it was happening, but in third place was the evening of Tuesday 2nd August 2005 then the whole sky was crystal clear and the sunset was spectacular, rich royal dark blue/black with a orange/red horizon after sunset, the milky way even then very noticeable overhead and the icing on the cake, STS104 passing directly overhead still attached to the ISS, and is beamed reflected light just like car headlights on high beam that illuminated us and the sky directly in front of them. It was awesome.

But in first place for me it would be when I first saw Saturn through a 8 inch Dob in a driveway of a friends place way back when I was 18. I was hooked, it blew me away. Later I then saw Jupiter but the first impression is always the everlasting one for me.

[astronut]

Well, mine would have to be my first look through my ( any ) telescope a Tasco 10x-50x X 40mm of the moon, seeing all those craters and mountains.
It was 1968 and I was 12 years old and full of the wonderment of the space age and the forthcoming lunar landings.:anaut:
Second would have to be very recently looking through my 12" Lightbridge, all those old favourites have taken on a new lease of life. WOW!!!:eyepop:

[hogly52]

Watching B&W TV images of Neil Armstrongs first steps on the moon.

Cheers,

Graeme

[Nightshift]

Easy, when the aliens returned me to my family.

But seriously, watching as a kid the apollo missions from start to finish. never missed a minute of it. If anyone has ever watched "The Dish" you will remember the 8 year old boy (son of Mayor) in the movie, "That's Hydrogen dad", "Oh is that bad?", "No dad it's suppose to happen". That was me.

[h0ughy]

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: and you know you even remember the lines:D :P

[davidpretorius]

Neil Who???

Jupiter from a few nights back. I have imaged many times over the last 9 months and had great seeing before, but to see the feed from the webcam of Jupiter and IO transiting filling the laptop screen, was magical.

The while next day whilst on the road, i kept thinking about it!

The wife even got dragged outside thanks to my breathless squeeks of joy.

i now see why you love saturn houghy!

[Lester]

Good topic Houghy,

No. 5= Photograghing Halley's comet
No. 4= Achieving perfect tracking and capturing the Horse Head with manual corrections during 120 minute exposure, prime fucus on 16" f4.5. This took me years to achieve in the early 1980's.
No. 3=Viewing the total solar eclipse at Tantanoola near Mt Gambier in 1976.
No. 2=Photographing the transit of Venus and having it printed on the front cover of the Pt Lincoln Times.
No. 1=Meeting the one and only Asimov.:thumbsup:

[davidpretorius]

have yahoo, spammed IIS, chatted on the phone, msn, but never met in person.

can't wait to meet him face to face.

[ballaratdragons]

2 spectacular favourites:

1. mid 1960's - as a young boy watching a meteor shower in Sydney that was actually a shower. Hundreds of meteors a minute!

2. Late 1980's - seeing Saturn thru a telescope. It was also the first time I had ever seen thru a telescope and I built it myself! (Triple Bonus)

[h0ughy]

Wow I would love to see a metoer shower like that, one day it may happen, I also want so see a full blown aurora too, too high a latitude for me. Saturn turned me to the dark side! i saw the light:lol: and it was through a dobbie!:thumbsup:

[Striker]

1: Seeing my wifes face when I told her my losmandy G11 with gemini cost $250.....the comment "oh yeah nice hubby" was a magical moment for me...Success.

2: My first 30 second exposure of the Lagoon Neb was a huge shock to the system.

[ving]

oh i dont know!

posibly seeing a double transit accross jupiter. that was pretty darn good :)

[Dave47tuc]

Leonids 1998 :eyepop:

DaveP and others will remember my talk at Snake Valley:D

[OneOfOne]

Like a lot of people:

First time I saw Saturn through a scope. This would also be my wifes best astronomical moment. Last night I had a couple of neighbours over for a squiz, and by the smiles on their faces and the sounds from their mouths...would have to be theirs too!


If there ever was a real lord of the rings, Saturn would have to be it. Just got to get everyone to see it before 2009 when the rings are gone...now that would be disapointing!

[davidpretorius]

I (along with my wife) will never look at a lounge chair the same way again without laughing!

[sheeny]

1. My first ever viewing of saturn through my old 8" Newt.
2. My first ever viewing of 47 Tuc through same scope.
3. Witnessing a fireball that lit up the landscape for, oh... say a 3k radius, with a bright blue light (similar colour to a welding arc), then then hearing a hissing/sizzling sound as the fragments broke up and went orange. (That made the hairs stand up on end!)
4. Viewing the moon with my first ever scope - a little non-descript refractor on an alt-az mount and seeing detail.

[cometcatcher]

Stuff on TV...
Watching the first moon walks.
Seeing Challenger blow up and Columbia break up.
Watching Giotto pass Halley's Comet.
The two Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
Watching the recent Comet Temple impact live on Nasa TV.

Magazines.
Viking Mars lander. I remeber being in hospital at the time and was reading about it in the local paper.
Following Voyager 1 and 2 and their journey through the solar system.
All the planet probes.

With my own eyes...
My first total lunar eclipse back in the 70's.
My first comet (Halley) through my 8 inch newt.
Supernova 1987A naked eye and the most memorable was through the 5.5 inch SN next to the tarantula nebula.
Horsehead nebula through the 10 inch f4.5.
Comet Levy in 1990 which I followed for a year.
Making my first telescope.
Making a 16 inch telescope.
Saturn, 47 Tuc and Omega through the same 16 inch telescope! Blown away.
Watching the comet Shoemaker Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter.
The beautiful Comet Hyakutake.
The bright Comet Hale-Bopp.
Mercury transits.
Venus transit.

I've probably forgotton a lot of things. They all seemed pretty dramatic at the time.

Edit, Oops, I read most dramatic but missed "best moment" otherwise I wouldn't have included the shuttle accidents. But you all knew that.

[ving]

why arent you looking at your wife the same way again? did she do something? :confuse3:

[cahullian]

you needed to be there ving lol and I think it was a banana lounge he he

[robagar]

the 11/11/99 solar eclipse, not least because it was cloudy right up to first contact :)

[Astroman]

Dave Tuc47 You wern't looking on the 16th were you?

Damn this is hard. So many firsts ok in no particular order.

1. Seeing Halley's comet on the 18th of March 1986, beautiful against the milkyway we could see then at 2am. My mum woke me up to see it on her birthday.

2. Observing Comet Hyakutake from 8 days after it's discovery till it dissappeared from view.

3. Watching the Leonids Meteor shower 16th, 17th and 18th of November 1998, although the best time was the morning of the 16th, the awesome display of very bright green meteors entering the atmosphere and leaving an awesome train of ionised particles which lasted minutes upon minutes. Following days were okay but no where near intense.

4. 2002 Solar Eclipse at ceduna, this was my first total eclipse and hopefully not my last.

5. 2001 Leonids were a nice display too lotsofmeteors countedover 300 in less than 30 minutes at one stage.

6. Seeing Saturn for the first time through my 4" telescope.

7. Seeing Jupiter for the first time through my 4" telescope.

8. Buying my Observatory for $250

9. Buying my 8" Telescope for $50

10. Being totally lit up by an unknown light source while observing at a dark site with my wife. We still have no idea where it came from.....

11. Seeing the impacts of shoemaker Levey 9 on Jupiter.

12. Watching comet Hale-bopp

13. Watching mercury and Venus transits.

14. Everytime I go out I am blown away by something new.

I guess thats about it.

[Dave47tuc]

Andrew,
I think that was the date. A group from the ASV Meteor section travelled to Woomera and saw what I will always remember as the best meteor show I have ever seen.:eyepop:
I also went to Woomera in 2001 a lot more meteors, I lost count but there was a meteor in the sky no matter where I looked at any one time.

98 was better for me as it was first large and bright meteor storm so to speak I have seen.:thumbsup:

[leon]

this would have to be seeing the stars for the first time through my home-built 200mm reflector "wow" never looked through a scope before that.

:eyepop:

[Itchy]

Thanks Houghy, great thread.

Without a doubt, it has to be the 2002 total eclipse in Ceduna. It was dark cloud all afternoon, and then as the ecplise started, the cloud began to clear but still created only short viewing periods as the cloud scooted across the sky. Then, 4 seconds before totallity, the sun moved out from the clouds and gave us a spectacular view for the next minute. The 32 seconds of totallity was awesome!

It is at the same time the most spectacular and most sublime moment of my astromony adventures.

Cheers

[circumpolar]

Can't remember the date :doh: maybe Wednesday 7 Decmber 2005, or the wednesday before or after...Definitely Wednesday!;)

1> MEGA METEOR!!! :eyepop:about 8:20pm just before twilight had ended, maybe mag -9 or brighter, flying 25degrees parallel to the horizon from the south to the W/N/W and over and beyound the Blue mts. Bright white/yellow and glissening. I was quick enough to grab the binos and take a close up. At first it looked like a plane because it was moving so steadily and parallel.
Sightings of this meteor were reported the next day on radio 702 ABC Syd.
Only about 4 days before this another mega meteor was filmed over WA and was shown on the evening news.
I live in hope of seeing another one of these. (BTW, if anyone else saw this please let me know. I was not a member [IIS] back then).

2> Finding M22 and Omega Cen with Binos (before telescope).
This was the ultimate sence of discovery.

3> Seeing first Saturn and the the Moon in the same night with my new
scope. I remember doing this...:party: :D for the rest of the night!

[yagon]

1. Like everyone else, my first sight of saturn through a scope was amazing.

2. Counting 30 shooting stars while lying on the sand dunes on a remote NSW beach. No binos, no scope, warm weather, no wind, a couple of beers and a couple of mates.

[fringe_dweller]

3 out of 4 of us located at a dark country location north of Crystal Brook on a hill (located in the mid north of SA - about two or so hours drive from adelaide) counted *literally* nearly 2000 meteors in three hours of observing/counting, many of which were very bright and spectacular (vast majority around mag +2<0>-2 with many fireballs and 'squadrons' of fireballs even) leonids - a high percentage of them left long lasting trains (longest lasting was about 20min - thats a story in itself).
While dark, there were a few light domes on the horizons, jamestown ect. - have seen darker spots. And we had a highway with the odd road train to contend with nearby also.
The best hour was around 4am to 5am were we again *literally* counted 1102 leonids.
(while technically a group count, if you had been lying on the ground with 360 d peripherary you would of at least most of all of them - most were so long lasting and tracked so much of the sky - although we all faced slightly different but slightly converging fields, one would exclaim something giving the others time to turn and catch at least some of their paths and glowing trains. so we technically speaking individually saw most of the count.
One standout highlight, out of dozens, would be the way some of the earth grazing squadrons converged on the western horizon, specially towards dawn. I have never seen that so well illustrated any other time.

I have probably mentioned my highlights ad nuseaum in here - but i will add one more - I may of mentioned this one
and that would be the '97 Eta Aquarids - mine/our first dedicated and in earnest attempt at observing a meteor shower so it was special that way to me - but also it was an awesome show, the best ETA show I have ever seen and I have seen all (majority from dark sites) since (except last years properly)
highlight number one is the best diverging split simultaneous meteors I have ever seen - came out of a perfect single point in the sky (which is weird coz their not supposed to do that) with radiant pretty high, as 4 bright pretty (maybe all mag +1 ) meteors in the shape of perfect cross and travelled a decent similar distance of maybe 10d and left purple/ very weird coloured luminous/glowing trains in the shape of this cross that lasted for a long time - maybe 5 min or so - spooky!
And then the best daylight fireballs I have ever seen, in the now totally clear, bright dawn blue sky upon returning to Adelaide and unpacking the cars. two seperate pairs one pair went west, and the other went south. they were very billowing smoke and the rising sun was illuminating the smoke trains - AWESOME!

[h0ughy]

lot of great moment coming through here! Good to see

[dugnsuz]

Hi all,
My road to damascus moment...
On a 1991 holiday in a town called Turgutreis on the Bodrum peninsula in Turkey. No streetlights, no moon - just so many stars that you could only lie back on the sandy beach and stare. Humbling and awe-inspiring all at once and all with just my naked eyes.:eyepop:
Never seen anything like it since - reckon I'll have to go to the dead centre to experience similar.
Went straight back to sunny Scotland and bought a cheap Tasco reflector:doh: and it's been downhill from there!!:lol:
Cheers
Doug:thumbsup:

[fringe_dweller]

This is all your fault Dave47tuc - getting me all nostalgic about the leonids :P while looking for our counts from 2001 I came across a couple of shots that one of my co-observers took while we were there.
My mate Stewart Leffanue brought along his 35mm film camera - but unfortunately the only shutter release cable we had broke before he took his first shot. So he took a couple of shots anyway just by holding his finger down on the button, none of them for very long. This was taken very early on, before the show really bloomed i think - and remember it takes a VERY speccy bright meteor to even look mildly interesting on film - unlike digital were they all look very good.
There is some LP in the shot from one of the light bubbles - maybe from CB? I have enhanced the full shot and that is making it worse - cant figure out the star field tho - and i think it was a 28mm lens?
I have never put these on the net or anywhere before.
there is an unprocessed crop of the interesting meteor - there was lots of crazy looking unusual ones!

[Dave47tuc]

But its great to remember such a spectacular event.;)
It was great to read your story Kearn.:thumbsup:
So many people missed it in 98 but made up for it in 2001.:)

[Starkler]

I havent experienced a good meteor shower myself. Any recommendations ?

[matt]

Nor I Geoff, Would love to though

[Astroman]

Leonids in the year 2032 would be a good place to start :)

[Dave47tuc]

Easy, next Thursday through to Sunday mornings try to get up after 2 am till dawn and you will see some Eta-Aquarids.;)
The stream is active now but these mornings may see higher rates. You will never know unless you look:whistle:

Some of the best meteors i've seen come from this stream.
I will get the family up if I see activity and its clear on any of these mornings. My wife loves meteors, as I do.:)

Good luck.

[matt]

Will have a look.

Thanks Dave:thumbsup:

[fringe_dweller]

Thankyou Dave :) I did 4 mornings for the '98 leonids (I was hardcore meteor shower observer back then)
mornings of 16th (15th UT) 17th (16th UT) 18th (17th UT) 19th (18th UT)
first three from dark sky sites - last one outer suburbia with pretty dark skies.
on the big morning, 17th local time, we did midnite till dawn :-))))) Stew again took some film photos (only 200 speed too i think?!!!) but it was after the action was mostly over :P
http://southern-x.org/gallery-leonid98.html
I remember reading the 2001 leonids was the best meteor shower/storm viewable from Oz since the settlement of Australia!
The leonids this year are possibly going to be quite decent I read
otherwise the Geminids in dec are solid performers in my books - nice weather too!

[syzygy]

During the SL9 impact. I'd set up with the hope of seeing the illumination of Europa which was in eclipse but clear of Jupiter when the K fragment was due to hit.

No flash of Europa but as time passed I was stunned to see the pillar of ejecta from the impact standing clear off Jupiters limb like a mountain! As the planet's rotation brought the impact site into direct view the pillar was replaced by a clear view of a tiny intensly dark spot. I spent at least a couple of hours watching it grow and evolve until I was clouded out.

The whole SL9 thing was exciting and I've made many other awe inspiring observations, as have we all. But nothing quite matches Jupiter's 'mountain'.

[davidpretorius]

i have heard a few mention this "once in a lifetime" event. awesome!

[Sonia]

This is a hard question!!

For me would be looking at the spectacular rings of Saturn, and as Patrick Moore says, one of the greatest planets in the solar system, and he is certainly right!

Secondly would be back in 1997, viewing comet Hale bopp. My first picture in astronomy.

[tornado33]

2 things get equal first for me.
Seeing comet Hyakutake from the dark pre dawn skies of Gloucester, NSW. I was visiting an Aunt at the caravan park there for the weekend. It was cloudy all day Saturday and into the night, so I went to bed disappointed (yes I was specifically there to try and see and photograph the comet) My 10 inch scope and film camera gear and lenses was packed in my then Subaru wagon. About 3 am mum woke me, she had happened to look outside and saw stars. So I, fully dark adapted from sleep walked outside without turning on any light. The southern sky was brilliant, I kept walking till I was well clear of the caravan and turn around not knowing what to expect. I was stunned. This gigantic comet stretched across the northern sky, its brilliant white coma in the east, and its tail full of resolvable streamers stretching far to the west. I only enjoyed it for a minute before sprinting to the car, and driving to the far end of the park and setting up in record time, everything went so well, locating Octans and polar aligning in minutes. I piggybacked my Canon T70 camera with Kodak ISO 200 film onto the 10 inch, with a 300MM F5.6 canon lens. I looked through the scope at the coma and was stunned to see a brilliant needle of light pointing in opposite direction of the sun from the fantastically brilliant central condensation. Guiding on this was easy, having to turn up the reticle brightness to see it above the glare! It was moving north so quick that guiding on the comet was the only way to get clear comet images, though no chance of fitting in the tail. I also swapped the 300mm lens for the 50mm one to try and fit it all in. The images made it into the next edition of Sky & space, the 300mm one making it onto the front cover too. Fog was threatening to form, when swapping lenses I had the one not being used inside my coat keeping it warm so it wouldn’t fog when I used it. It worked.

The other event is the impact plume of Comet SL9 fragment G when it hit Jupiter. I had seen the HST shots of the smaller chunks on the TV news, a plume was actually visible from the impact site just behind the limb of Jupiter, so I worked out that the big fragment, G should make one big enough to see in my 10 inch. So I, and about a dozen mates set up in my backyard, never had there been so many telescopes at my place. The drive was running, optics collimated and eyepiece focussed as we waited. After a while I saw what i thought to be a moon emerging from behind the planet, but as it emerged it wasn’t round, but rather mushroom shaped. I yelled out that I could see the explosion plume! Others came over for looks and confirmed it It soon cleared the planet totally and sat there for a few mins as a giant mushroom cloud, the size of a jovian moon, before flattening out and succumbing to Jupiter’s heavy gravity and falling back. An hour later a chunk of the atmosphere seemed to be missing as the impact site rotated into view, we were absolutely stunned. We had witnessed an event so rare it made solar eclipses commonplace. Though many amateurs saw directly the impact sites precious few saw an actual explosion plume. I now know that if a comet impact can throw a fireball hundreds of miles high against Jupiter’s gigantic gravity well, if it hit Earth, we would be finished, end of story.

Well, that’s my greatest experience, though just slightly less is recovering Halleys comet the same day as anyone else as it came from behind the sun. It has a sellar like core, a wispy halo round it, so bright I would have been able to see it in daylight had I not had to go to work. Id looked up an ephemeris of it and started looking when it was still not far from the sun, well before magazines suggested looking for it. I cant remember the actual date but I think it was mid in February, not long after perihelion. As it receded from the sun it lost this stunningly bright central condensation, and sadly many missed out on this early and brief phenomenon.
Scott