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A surprising experience to me was seeing Saturn through a telescope. Despite working on PhD in physics at the time and being a lab demonstrator for an undergraduate astronomy course, I looked at it and thought "shit, it's real!"

Though it was a nice enthusiast-level telescope, I think it was just seeing the rings that did it. So I reckon a cheaper one would have had the same effect.

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There's something about seeing a dot in the sky turn into a real picture that just hits you somewhere very primal, I know exactly the feeling although it's hard to explain. It's exactly what you expected to see except blurrier, but it's still like a punch to the gut. Jupiter and its moons are similar, easily seen with a little magnification.

I find that if I sit with it a little bit, I can actually feel the reality of the situation, that I'm in fact looking at an object in front of me that's very very far away but bigger than my entire planet. If that perspective sinks in it really just blows your mind. Maybe similar (though surely lesser) to what astronauts feel when they see the earth as a sphere.

You can see the rings with a small, cheap telescope but they will be a fuzzy blob. Good glass of large diameter is not cheap but it makes a huge difference in the experience. A Dobsonian scope is an excellent choice for good planet viewing at a reasonable price. Dobbies have a good, big mirror with no unnecessary nonsense tacked on.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dqwun9mqiSo

I too had that reaction the first time I saw it through a telescope. I think some part of me put Saturn pictures in the same category as movies - pretty but not 'real'. When i saw the rings floating there it was pretty mind blowing.

I felt the same effect with Saturn many years ago. And also with the dazzling blue-gold double star, Albiero[1]. You can see both the blue and gold colours very clearly through the telescope.

Another excellent thing to look up is the M13 globular cluster[2].

[1] https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/albireo-finest-double-s...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_13

I saw someone post this same thing on Reddit a few years ago, and the weird thing is that I had the same excitement reading the post and seeing the blurry pic of a tiny planet with an obvious ring around it.

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