Saw Saturn in a telescope felt odd?

I recently saw Saturn for the first time I a telescope. The view was amazing, and I could clearly see the shadow of the ring on the planet. However, the excitement I felt turned very quickly to real sadness and loneliness. Here was a planet so far away, floating on its own through space.

I've never felt so sad before? Quite depressing actually!!

[Tobi]

That must have been absolutely amazing! I would love to have seen that.

Don't be sad for the planet. It is far from alone. What we perceive from our viewpoint is not necessarily what's going on.

Maybe the experience echoed some deep ancient sense of loneliness within yourself. Sometimes I get that if I stare at the moon a lot through binoculars. But in my case I actually love that feeling. It is like a sense of utter wildness. Of course I like to come back from it, to "warmer" things. But it is interesting to experience it.

I experienced this the first time I looked properly through my telescope. I was looking at things and I actually started to feel tearful. I think it was more because I'd felt insignificant and small and helpless.
You grow up seeing these things in books, on tv, nothing compares to seeing it through your very own eyes, and finding it yourself. It is a really overwhelming sensation. Roll with it ^^

[samantha360]

I wish my friends were into this sort of thing. It must have been amazing to see something like that from here on Earth. At it's closest Saturn is 746 million miles (1.2 billion kilometers) away. That's crazy!

I saw saturn about a month ago through my first telescope. One of those things everyone has to see. For me personally i felt rather angry afterwards considering how vast our universe is and what we're missing out on out there because we're too immature to get it together to develop technology to start finding some neighbors out there

Another way to look at it is this. You are somehow connected to it because you can see it, yet physically it is so far away. So if something so far away is still connected, then what does that say about all the people and things right here on earth?