What's the Most Amazing Thing You've Ever Seen?

[W2PFY]

Feeling the entire thing shake when witnessing a 'single turbine slowdown' demo inside Parker dam...

I wuz standing on a catwalk at the opening chute of a large water hydro turbine when it first started up. The whole building shook and water came out of the thing at thousands cubic feet per second. It scared me right off the catwalk. The area behind the output filled up to about five feet deep in about 1/2 hour. The area was about the size ten football fields. Then the water went down a stream somewhere.

[WD8BIL]

The tornado of '86 lifting my garage roof up 20' and depositing it on my neighbor's toyota truck.
Bullseye!

[K1JJ]

Some amazing highlights I've seen:

As a 19 year old newbie on a motorcycle trip, seeing the Colorado Rocky Mountains from 250 miles away in Nebraska thinking they were clouds. As we approached they grew and grew until we were dwarfed amongst them.

The Grand Canyon is another wonder of the whirl that is much too much to absorb for the human mind.  

Hiking all day down an ancient river bed at Denali in Alaska - climbing to the top of a peak and seeing the mighty Alaskan Range extended in front of me for the first time.

The DEAD silence of the Utah desert is deafening - and seeing car lights approaching from 20 miles away at night.  The moonless night desert's intensely bright sky filled with millions of stars -  the milky bands of the galaxy - all mind blowers.

And finally, the backyard observatory. (24" mirror) Viewing real photons from the Sombrero Galaxy (4 billion suns). It would take 29 million years traveling at the speed of light to get there. How could something so far away still be big enough to be seen? I sometimes axe, "I wonder what's happening in there?" Do those people have discos too?  I get mesmorized when viewing the very faint treasures of deep space.

And viewing the globular star clusters in our own Milky Way - tight balls of multi-colored bee swarms of ruby, blue and white diamonds.

T

[WA1GFZ]

I drove through Utah during a full moon, it was beautiful.

[WA2TTP Steve]

Viewing the sunrise from Mt Haleakala on Maui this last December. 10000 feet up at 0530 and 30 degrees.

[W5COA]

Two very similar things: I saw a gas well ignite one morning before dawn south of Houston. It was like the sun came up all at once.

I also watched a large rocket launch, again before dawn. It was much like the gas well going off, with the sky turning from black to mid-day in an instant.

I was in place to watch a Shuttle launch before dawn, which would have been spectacular. Unfortunately, the launch was delayed till 10:00 am, and so the fire was lost in the light of the sun.

JW

[k4kyv]

Hard to name one thing, but something that stands out in my mind would be the morning after a tornado hit the north side of Houston while I was living there. I recall the hard rain, lightning, wind, hail and pea-green sky while the storm was passing through.  Upon hearing about the tornado, I drove up the road that lay in the path of the storm, as soon as the highway had been cleared of debris and re-opened to traffic.  The entire length of a freight train was lifted off its tracks that ran alongside the highway, and deposited almost intact on the ground about 500 ft. west of the road.

[KB1IAW]

While on an overnight crossing of the Bay of Fundy heading for Mount Desert Island being surrounded by whales. With Cape Sable Island well behind us at sunset and nothing but glassy-assed calm seas ahead these giant creatures, many well more that twice the size of our little vessel, were slapping their tails and breaching all around. We could hear them nearby surfacing to breath well after full darkness set in. Talk about feeling truly insignificant.

[W1RKW]

Tom,
I'm glad you brought up the astronomy thing.  I grew up in the suburbs of Chi town and then moved to CT where there was plenty of light pollution so I never had a baseline experience with dark skies.  I remember the first time I went on a back packing trip in my early 20s into the deep woods of northern New England and experienced truly dark skies.  I being near sighted then (and now) couldn't believe what I was seeing in the night-time sky. Wearing glasses amplified it even more.  The Milky Way was just amazing. There were more stars than anyone could imagine.  Trying to pick out basic constellations was difficult. Even Jupiter was difficult. All the normal objects just seemed to blend in with everything else. It was overwhelming yet memorable.  Then going out to the desert and being 4 to 5 thousand feet above see level in dry atmosphere and being able to see stuff on the horizon even with the naked eye was an amateur astronomers paradise.  

[K1JJ]

Hi Bob,

Yep, those lucky guys out in the SW desert regions have tremendous seeing. Remote areas of Arizona and Texas are known for some of the best skies - especially the dryness of the air.


I remember a guy from AZ up at the Stellafane star party in Springfield VT saying that something was wrong with the optics of many scopes. It turned out he was not used to our seeing up here.

Yes, it becomes difficult to pick out constellations. That's when we know it's a dark sky.. :-)

T

[DMOD]

While driving on campus one afternoon in my Chevy Vega a severe thunderstorm came over the campus and a lightning bolt hit the tree just to my right, about 20 feet up from the ground, and maybe less than 10 yards away.  

It spewed hot, burning sap and bark all over my Vega. Vega kept running.  

Phil - AC0OB

[KG6TJU]

The birth of my two sons. Driving west for 10 hours into an increasing thunderstorms on Highway 80 back in '88 or '89 after a long drought, that was spectacular!

 How about the least amazing thing you ever saw? I don't know about you but for me it was probably on Youtube.

[KX5JT]

Watching the cloud ceiling across the street over a pasture start to rotate and seeing the dust kick up on the ground underneath as a tornado was born.  It moved off to the northeast for about a 1/4 mile then dissappeared.

Seeing the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew as I drove near the landfall area.  There were strips of wooded areas totally gone and homes/barns etc totally demolished.  These strips were about 50 yards wide.  Then the next 50 yards seemed untouched, trees and homes intact.  Then the next 50 yards were totally demolished.... strip after strip of alternating devastation and non-devastation.

Seeing the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains grow in size and beauty as I approached it from the east.

As a 5 year old, some strange rash/hives had broke out all over my body. In a panic my parents called their friend, a devout Christian, to come pray over me and I literally watched them dissappear within a minute, while he was praying for healing.

[kg8lb]

I drove through Utah during a full moon, it was beautiful.

  A lot prettier to ride through  
Then again most places are. I really hate traveling in a car.

 Most amazing ? My new born sons.

[AB3L]

Child birth followed closely by a shuttle launch from the visitors center @ three miles. I believe you can't get that close any more...

[W2PFY]

Even though I have never seen a spewing volcano up close like the ones in Hawaii, It would have to be mind blowing. I've been to Yellowstone and it was close to Heaven on earth. When we stopped in Geyser basin and saw all the wildlife each separated by their species with wolfs on the perimeter, I took a deep breath and got the most natural high I have ever had

I did that trip in Yellowstone on snowmobile in 1987. I think they stopped snowmobiles for awhile in the park but maybe it's allowed now?   

[NE4AM]

The Geyser O' Poo in the Dayton Flea Market last Saturday.

[K5IIA]

Tim's SBE rig on a panadapter. 

[Ed - N3LHB]

Mother earth doing aerobatics in a Pitts S2A, pulling 6G's...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLDiPEgysYI&feature=related

[Ed/KB1HYS]

Apollo-Soyuz from my backyard as a kid.

[N8LGU]

    The most amazing think I have ever seen occured while flying over the midwest US on a typical night training flight in a KC-135A @ about 35,000'. We had to fly through a squall line of thunderstorms to return home.
    We all heard a rather loud mechanical BANG as a piece of orange red metal flew back from the area of the flap indicator and hit the cockpit floor with a THUD and bounced up and hit the galley door again with a THUD. It then changed instantly into a ball of glowing gas/plasma about 8" in diameter and started floating in the air around the cockpit. It made a hissing sound as it floated and acted as if it were looking for some place to go. After about 20 seconds it floated up near the sextant port and suddenly disappeared with a loud POP. This was witnessed by a crew of four and after landing we reported the event at the maint debriefing.
    We were notified the next day that there was a two inch hole burned into the vertical stabilizer where we were apparenly hit by lightning.
    The thing that puzzles me to this day is why it acted like it had mass/inertia properties when it was first formed and bounced off the floor and against the galley door (even left a small dent in the door) only to become a floating ball of plasma.
    Can lightning make physical matter? Can physical matter become plasma and disappear with a POP?
    Upon inspection, no metal was found missing from the plane except for the hole in the tail.

[W2PFY]

The most amazing think I have ever seen occurred while flying over the Midwest US on a typical night training flight in a KC-135A @ about 35,000'. We had to fly through a squall line of thunderstorms to return home

I really believe you seen GOD in a pure energy form. I mean the real GOD, not the ones people pray too

[AJ1G]

The way the Red Sox have been playing this week - 28 runs in two games and now they are in first place in the AL East.  All those jumpers off the Tobin Bridge when they  started 0 and 6 died in vain!

[KE5YTV]

Dave, You were one of the few to ever experence ball lightning. Very few air crews ever come face to face with it.    Mike

[WU2D]

#10 Tennessee Ernie Ford hovering over me like God (true story I was sitting outside the old governors palace at Colonial Williamsburg when a door open in back of me and there he is!
Same vein - swimming in a pool at a Holiday Inn on the Interstate in PA and suddenly I see both Hee Haw Haggar twins are in the pool with me. Very Spooky.)
# 9 Alaska wading with hundreds of salmon in the Kenai at 17 years old.
#8 A trip with dad to NYC where he lets me loose on radio row.
#7 Again with dad this time to Miami for a conference where we are staying at the Shelbourne Hotel. I hit the pool and am surprised at the assortment of gorgeous exotic women. Turns out the Miss Universe pageant contestants are staying at the hotel all week!   
#6 Seeing the first Space Shuttle Columbia launch in 1980.
#5 September 11, 2001 and we have a big training conference at work for government tech agents. We rig a TV in the lab and hover around. All the beepers and phones went off at once.
#4 The doctor arriving in the dark with overcoat on at 6:30 PM on January 13th 2003, for a house call, knocking at my door and telling me I have Leukemia.
#3 Rome and Roman ruins, Petra and the Middle East in General, The Dead Sea, Wading in the Jordan, the Bedouin people of Arabia. 
#2 Staying married to Jane, the same woman for 31 years, whom, I met in college where we graduated, got married and moved to FL for my first job, all in the space of 2 weeks.
# Seeing my sons born and grow up into fine young men.