"Dramatic" is not a word often used to describe any Deep Sky Object. Beautiful, yes. Spectacular, awesome, breathtaking, even mind boggling. But dramatic? Very seldom, and most often when the term is used, it's not really appropriate. For drama requires action - action that can be seen. And for the most part, the stars (and everything else outside our Solar System) are, from our human perspective at least, eternal. To witness movement, change, and events... well, you have to stick closer to Home. Fortunately however, the Solar System provides drama enough. No one need bemoan any lack of activity there!
I thought about this Tuesday night, as I observed the Grand Conjunction (one day late, due to some unfortunate clouds on the night of closest approach). Here was drama indeed! Yes, I am aware that the characters in this celestial play were separated by a half billion miles, but they appeared to have survived a near miss. My eyepiece was positively crowded with planets and moons. Once again, as with the 2019 Transit of Mercury, I could feel in my bones that we lived in a Solar System, and not just in a collection of planetary odds and ends circling a sun.
I'm no scientist, but I have faith that someday there will be a science of planetary ecology, and we will study the interdependence of the various components of the solar system in the same way that we today study biological habitats here on Earth, in which every lifeform is dependent upon all the others to survive. Perhaps the concept of a "Goldilocks Zone" is way too simplistic. The habitability of the Earth may depend on our distance from Jupiter, and even on Jupiter's distance from Saturn, as much as our own distance from the Sun. And this is not to mention the likely role of Kuiper Belt Objects (or else comets) in explaining our watery surface, and the Moon's possible role in plate tectonics.
So enjoy the drama the solar system offers! On the way home from observing the Grand Conjunction, I considered where did this experience rank with other similar occurrences I've observed? And list maker that I am, I couldn't resist coming up with a "Top Ten" dramatic events I've seen in my time.
And here they are:
1. The 2017 Total Solar Eclipse - no contest there.
2. The Grand Conjunction - hard to beat that crammed field of view.
3. The Transit of Venus - made even more significant by the rich history of past transits.
4. The Perseid Meteor Shower during my first Stellafane (about 6 years ago) - never before or since did I ever see so many meteors (more than 60) in so short a time (a little over 3 hours).
5. The Transit of Mercury - not as photogenic as Venus's, but I did get to see the whole thing.
6. Comet Garradd - not my first comet (that was Halley in 1985), nor even the most spectacular (that honor would go to Hale-Bopp), but I followed Garradd for months, as it traversed the sky from Pegasus to Ursa Major while passing by a number of Messier objects. Whenever it was right up against a globular cluster (which was several times), I could understand why Messier called them "false comets".
7. Any Mars Opposition - I've been paying attention to them ever since 2010, and I positively get "Mars Fever" whenever one is approaching. I love just looking at Mars naked eye, appearing like a baleful red eye staring back at me. I have no difficulty in understanding why the ancients believed the planet was a portent of doom!
8. Any Jupiter shadow transit - a test of my observing skills. I also love watching one of the Galilean moons emerging from behind Jupiter.
9. Lunar sunrise - never gets old. If there was nothing else to observe up there, I'd still want a telescope. The ever shifting shadows remain endlessly fascinating.
10. The Lunar Eclipse of August 6th, 1971. Why this one, you ask? Because I remember it so well. I was not "into" amateur astronomy at the time. I was a student at Arizona State University, and walking home from class with a good friend, talking about God knows what. There was a full moon that evening, so even back in those days when streetlights were a rarity in Arizona, the night was pretty bright. But then I happened (for no particular reason) to look up, and was shocked to see that half the moon had disappeared! I had no idea that an eclipse was going on, and I remember being actually frightened. What had happened to the moon? I was positively relieved to learn that it was "only" an eclipse.
