I saw Andromeda once with my naked eye and the emotion it stirred in me is something I will never forget.

My parents lived in Wiepenkathen, a small village outside of Stade, Lower Saxony in Germany. Its's about 60km from the North Sea.

I had returned from a day in Hamburg (which is southeast of Stade) and took the bus from Stade and I think I took the wrong bus because for some reason I decided to get out in the middle of nowhere. I could see the village's lights across a very wide frozen farm field, so I thought "no big deal, I'll just cross through the field". As I'm crossing through the field I realize I've never seen so many stars. Our neighboring arm of the Milky Way was so incredibly bright, at some point I just stood there, freezing, and looking up into the sky. I even got the distinct sensation of depth and started feeling vertigo, as if I could fall into the sky and plunge deep into the starfield, so I had to look down towards the horizon again...

My heading was north or northwest, but when I scanned downward I noticed that in an otherwise completely clear and black sky, I could see this faint purple cloud in the northeast, not too close to the horizon, but not too high either. I thought that's weird, and wondered if maybe it was just steam or smoke that had come out of a power plant and maybe the lights of a village or city far away were lighting it up from below. This would explain this super small cloud... but this cloud must have been far away too because it wasn't really moving. I walked a bit more and the cloud was still there. So I stopped and really studied. It never moved at all. And it had a weird whirling spinning shape, with a bright center area. And that's when I realized what I was looking at. Andromeda. M31.

I immediately felt complete and utter awe. I realized that on this night I'm seeing thousands of stars, and most of those stars are relatively close to us. And then beyond those stars I can see clearly our neighboring arm of the Milky Way... which is even more stars further away all bunched together (comparatively). And then... even further than that... is an entirely separate galaxy with a trillion stars itself, and I'm seeing it right there with my own two eyes.

The sense of insignificance was incredible... and yet at the same time, paradoxically, the fact that I was there to witness it, to see it, made it so profound and important to me. It's hard to explain. It was not a religious experience, but it was definitely a humbling feeling. And I wish everybody could experience that.