Posted on 02/16/2008 6:21:57 PM PST by Names Ash Housewares
I think I heard mariachi music.
“Proud of my country.”
Indeed.
Words fail when I think of our astronauts and our nations reach for the stars.
It came 5 minutes late from the West, moving really fast. Fantastic sight! Wow!
It’s reflecting the light from the sun, which is just below the horizon. That’s why you can generally only see the space station, satellites, etc. only within 1-1/2 hours after sunset or 1to 11/2 hours before sunrise.
Not an astronomer here, but practically all illumination visible to our eyes is from the sun. Either the light hits it directly and bounces off it, or the light hitting the moon that bounces (reflects) off of it then hits the orbiting satellite. There may be a small (probably infintesimal) amount of illumination from stars, but it is our star/sun that accounts for nearly all the illumination.
It was great to see here in Baja California. Thanks again, original poster.
Saw it! Thanks for the tip! West of the moon here in the Fresno area.
Beautiful and bright here in Northern California. Right on schedule. Truly amazing stuff.
THe space station reflects sunlight. It is well above the shadow if the earth, so even though we are in the evening darkening hours, it is well-lit.
San Diego we had some clouds moving in,
but there were enough breaks in them to see them pass by the Moon and Mars.
It was I think the brightest I have ever seen the station, even with the shuttle docked.
Saw it... thanks for the heads up... it went right between Orion’s shoulders.
I told my wife a woman was driving it and that’s why it kept going into the clouds.
I saw it. There is a grand opening for a spanish market near by with skylight distracting the view.
Here it went through Orion’s belt.
No, I didn’t hear it. When I went back out to my balcony, I realized it was a low sound coming from a building across the street. My daughter’s boyfriend said he could hear it and I assumed it was the shuttle, LOL. Sorry, duh. Not very knowledgable of the shuttle.
Finally! Only scattered clouds for a change.
Plus I was excited and ran with my laptop outside when I saw this thread at 6:41pm. I wanted to let FR know ASAP if I saw anything. Duh, again. :)
If you go to heavens-above.com and punch in your location, you can find times and other stuff about future passes. This one was a bright one, at magnitude -2.2 for me, and there should be some even brighter ones in the near future, as bright as -2.5.
If you don't know what these magnitudes mean: the smaller the magnitude, the brighter. The sun is around -26, the full moon is around -12, and Venus at its brightest (not visible here now; it's a "morning star") is brighter than -4. The faintest stars visible to a good naked eye under ideal skies are around +6.
This skymap program puts this quarter moon at -11.4, Mars (that orange "star" west of the moon, or "right of the moon" for us in the mid-northern latitudes, at -0.1, and Sirius (that brightest whitish star in the southeast) around -1.4. In other words, the ISS was the brightest star-like thing in my sky (it clearly beat out some aircraft too).
Well the other night I was looking up at sky (here in the PNW/Oregon Coast) and saw a light the size of a big star moving along at a slow (not like a shooting star) pace heading SE (I think).
Do you think that could have been a satellite?
Looking at your link, it looks like we can see the rogue spy satellite tomorrow night at about 6:31pm with a magnitude of 1.2? (69 deg. off horizon SW to NE pass?) From what I understand lower mag. means brighter? Thanks.
“USA-193” Spy Sat:
17 Feb 1.2 18:27:14 10 SSW 18:29:30 69 ESE 18:31:09 16 NE
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