So, many moons ago (heh heh) I signed up at NASA for “Spot the Station” alerts (go here if you want to sign up) because it sounded cool:
Did you know you can see the International Space Station from your house? As the third brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon, the space station is easy to see if you know where and when to look for it.
NASA’s Spot the Station service sends you an email or text message a few hours before the space station passes over your house. The space station looks like a fast-moving plane in the sky, though one with people living and working aboard it more than 200 miles above the ground.
Well, most of the alerts have been for my sleeping hours…and while I thought the idea was cool, it wasn’t cool enough to actually set an alarm to wake up for. Or the time was fine, but I forgot about it with bedtime rituals, etc. But tonight, the stars aligned (heh heh) and this was the alert that I reread in my email at about 9:25 tonight:
Time: Tue Jun 04 9:32 PM, Visible: 6 min, Max Height: 77 degrees, Appears: SW, Disappears: NE
So I told Tom we were going out to look for it. 🙂
Of course, neither of us grabbed our phone so we weren’t entirely sure which direction SW was, but we guessed. And waited. And watched. And marveled at just how much stuff is out there moving around at night. And then we saw it—from a completely different direction than we thought—but it was obviously it. The brightest thing in the sky, moving lickety-split. If you hadn’t known that’s what you were looking at, you really would have just thought it was a plane. It looked that close. But of course, it’s amazing to think it was 200 miles above our heads.
It was really cool, even though it really just looked like a plane.
But I did it. And now I can unsubscribe from the alerts. 🙂
That is cool! I spotted it one time we were outside just looking toward the stars. Just happened to hit it right! Like you say, it HAD to be it! Moving quickly at a constant speed. Cool beans.