awesome and thrillingly beautiful

Agreed. Reading your post encouraged me to step outside for ten minutes -- it's now 1:26am. Seeing was not too good as there's a light frost, but there were Omega Centauri, SMC and LMC naked-eye sights. Crux and the pointers. Sagittarius's "teapot" about 10 degrees from my zenith; the Milky Way extending right across the sky from almost south to almost north. Magic!

After barely a minute outside a large, bright meteor streaked across the border between Capricornus and Sagittarius almost as if to say, "You came outside to appreciate the view -- here's one for you!"

I appreciate such sights more than I used to because a few years ago I got severe cataracts and through the worst eye couldn't even make out the splayed fingers of a hand unless the hand was dark and background light, or vice versa, and the other eye wasn't much better. To get near-perfect sight back and see "my" stars again was a real gift!

For 20 years I've collected all the photos I could and made up scrapbooks, and I never bother with a telescope because I know that the view I'd get could never touch those beautiful photos. Now and then I get out binoculars to study the moon or look for Jupiter's four biggies, but much of my viewing is just spent with naked-eye, and unceasingly being awestruck by the beauty of it.

I often wish that others appreciated what I so often do.