set your alarm!

When I was a kid, I was very proud of my dad. (Not like I'm not now! but anyway...)

Way back in Battle Creek, growing up, I went with him a few times to "help" build the telescope he was making in a class at the local natural history museum - wow, I loved and knew that museum well, good old Kingman. Dad was an amateur astronomer, and I loved being his sidekick. I loved using his Astronomy Magazines and a red-plastic covered flashlight to help find whatever fuzzy star cluster we were looking for, or counting how many moons of Jupiter we could see that time around. I loved getting up at odd hours to see unique astronomical phenomena - Halley's comet once, another time Neptune at 4:00 in the morning. (That was during Neptune's phase in orbit that runs outside Pluto's orbit - I guess I've viewed in the sky all of the currently labeled "planets" in the solar system, since the only one we haven't is Pluto/Charon!)

Living in a city, without much access to dark sky and no telescope, our current star viewing is limited to me pointing out bright magnitude objects and constellations. It's pretty sad to me that our regular viewing is limited to the big dipper and the northern cross. (Check out Venus in the western sky at sunset these days, though! very pretty!)

A few days ago in the morning I was listening to All Things Considered on public radio, when they mentioned that we'd be able to see, here in Minnesota, the crossing of the International Space Station in the evening sky. Exciting!!

Jeff had a sinking feeling, however, when I announced to him that we needed to set an alarm... he knows me well enough, and assumed I'd be dragging him and K out of bed at 3:00 in the morning or something! noooo... !

The first night, although the magnitude was brighter and the crossing higher, we couldn't see it due to the brightness of the sky at 9:15 pm.

Last night, the highest point of the crossing was at 9:41 pm, and we were out there early to try to spot it. The sky was still too bright in the west, where the station was rising, and we couldn't see it until Jeff found it, right about at its highest point. We ran across the street to stand in the dentist's yard and watch it quickly set in the northeast.




See the tiny dim spot in the last 2 pictures? These were taken only a second or 2 apart - that's how fast the satellite moves. It was only visible for less than 2 minutes in our sky.

After we saw it, we sat down with the girls in front of the computer for a few minutes to show them pictures of what they just saw - outside and in! They were pretty amazed.

Here's two websites to help you out in your search for satellites in your own neighborhood!

Satellite Flybys
Heavens-Above

(At Heavens-Above, under Configuration, click on "select from map" to specify your location.)

Happy satellite viewing!