The other day I woke up at 3am in a strange hotel to gobble yesterday’s stale ham sandwich, comb my hair, brush my teeth, yank on my outfit & report to the aircraft at 4am. We were airborne at 5am, in a place where sunrise was about 7:30am. It was dead dark. And stupid cold.
For the next 2 hours eastbound we watched Jupiter, Mars, & Venus in linear conjunction, and a couple thousand stars, plus the Milky Way low on the eastern horizon. At that hour the radios are real quiet. As we roared eastward the planets, stars, & galaxy all wheeled westward overhead at double speed. If you looked carefully you could see the galaxy move. We hoped to see Mercury rise in turn, but there were low clouds at the distant horizon and the morning twilight lit the sky before Mercury cleared the clouds.
It made getting up stupid-early worth it.