it didn't occur to me that the spectacular pics are timelapse photo's still it's a bucket list item, there was a near total eclipse in the late 90's and i watched it through a welding mask, kinda weird, it was like twilight as it happened and all the birds started singing like it was bed time, mars was close enough to be visible to the human eye and i made the effort to go out and have a look at that, one year the leonid showers were predicted to be pretty spectacullar and i stood out freezing my nuts off in november, they were impressive,  i even got to watch the space shuttle catch up to and then dock with the iss, it was visible to the human eye if you knew where to look at the right time,
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