Topic: Celestial sightings

As many of you may know, tonight (morning actually) is the peak viewing time for the Perseid meteor shower. Hopefully you'll be able to see a few even though there's a full moon tonight.
What some may not know however, it's also a good time to view the ISS (International Space Station) over the next few days. All you have to do is input your country (on the left),state and closest city to you for times and directions in the link below.
So.....all of you get out, snuggle up and gaze at the glory of the heavens!

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/si … index.html

Why don't we eliminate all the warning labels and let things sort themselves out?

Re: Celestial sightings

...keep an eye out for Elenin...you never know your luck!?!  wink

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
R. Buckminster Fuller

Re: Celestial sightings

I've done some looking the past few nights but so far have only seen ONE, last night... it was real long and fast.  On Thursday the sky was nice and clear here, but the nearly full moon was washing out a lot.  Things got darker once the moon set (around 4:00 maybe?), but by that time I was falling asleep.  Last night there was a very light haze of cloudcover, which started out sparse but got worse as the night went on, and by the time the moon set the sky was totally obscured.  The earlier haze did make for a beautiful full moon though, glowing all frosty-like.  Tonight is supposed to be stormy, and I haven't checked tomorrow night's forecast yet.

Guido, thanks for pointing that out about the International Space Station.  It's funny, but when my friend and I first went out last night, I pointed out what I thought was a satellite moving across the sky, but it was brighter and faster than the average satellite I see, and he said maybe it's the Space Station.  I just looked at the chart on your link and it says it was visible in my area at 10:03pm for 2 minutes, and that's probably about the time we were out there.  I'm pretty sure I've seen it in the past too.

I final that the average person doesn't realize you can actually see satellites and the Space Station with the naked eye.  In fact, I didn't know it until maybe 10 years ago when a guide at an observatory we visited pointed one out to us.  I think I'd even seen them before but assumed they were just really high planes, although I should've realized they were moving a little too fast to be that.  They look just like a star moving across the sky in a perfectly straight line.  You can only see them for a window of time after sunset and before dawn, when the sun is below the horizon enough that the sky is dark, yet still able to reflect on an object high in the sky.

--Vik cool

Re: Celestial sightings

No joy here, thick marine cloud layer all night. Even the moon was just a glow. We have friends out in the back country where there are no city lights and it is worth the trip on good displays. Thanks Guido for the heads up.
Rick

Free download from Vienna! http://mbsy.co/bNLR
Lots of unique videos of Joe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwd5vL8fXTw
Buy Joe's merchandise here. http://www.jbonamassa.com/affiliates/id … hp?id=1381