Stuff like this puts me in awe. Seeing that image, my mind directly traveled many moons back *1997*: A good friend and I traveled from DFW to the Kiamichi Mts. in E. Oklahoma for a couple of days/nights just to view comet Hale Bopp. We stayed up all night both nights just staring and contemplating... It was purely, naturally magical, almost mystical. I was floored at the very least.
No childish quips here ;)
We were walking home from an event Friday night and looking up at the sky. The planets were surprisingly visible especially in the small town where we had our event. The fingernail moon... and I could find Mars from its reddish tint.
Or the time that we saw Saturn using our hobby telescope. Thought that there was a smudge on the lens and then we realized that it was the rings that made it look distorted. Very exciting.
Similar experience on my pheasant hunting trips to a teeny, tiny town in N.W. Kansas. The farm house we stayed in was way out in the boondocks (actually the town could be considered boondocks). I was always an early riser so I'd wake up about 4:30 a.m., make coffee and go out in the farm yard, drink coffee and just stare at the stars. Never had such an unobstructed view of the heavens before in my life.......