Posted this is in a facebook astronomy group, in which someone had asked which was my most beautiful experience in astronomy:
Almost everyone I have met had some story or the other they just had to share about the night they first saw the Milky Way, the time they woke up early and saw dozens of shooting stars, the first time they ever looked through a telescope...which was your most beautiful experience in astronomy?Some 6 years ago, I just bought my first telescope (which I am still using). I was looking for the Andromeda Galaxy and could not at all find it. But eventually I did! It looked grey and spherical and got darker away from the center. It was so beautiful... I showed it to mom and she said it looked heavenly!When I later fired up Stellarium, I slowly realized that what I saw was not in the Andromeda constellation at all! I could not explain it. The object turned out to be in the constellation Perseus, because I recognized the stars around the object. But Stellarium showed nothing where the object was supposed to be! Finally, I realized that it was the comet I read about in astronomy blogs that had suddenly and mysteriously brightened by a factor of almost a million (the comet was at mag ~3 when I saw it). I was so happy I saw a comet, that too just a few weeks after I bought my first telescope!More about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Holmes
Hi. That's a great experience. What was the telescope with which you spotted the comet? I want to buy one but can't seem to decide on a model.
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