I got to see the latest 55 Starlink satellites traverse the sky right over my house tonight. I happened to be outside locking up the chicken coop when I remembered the news story from earlier, and noticed the time was near. I ran into the house and killed all the lights, came back out and started scanning the skies. Woo Hoo! there they were going southwest to northeast almost straight up overhead. It only took a couple of minutes until they passed into the Earth's shadow and winked out one at a time. I didn't expect that, I figured they would fly past where I could see them.
The only other space type thing I ever saw was the ISS passing overhead one time.
Years ago on a Florida vacation we all went to Cocoa Beach on the day of a shuttle launch to watch it go up. Unfortunately, a mechanical issue scrubbed the launch until well after we returned home to Kommiecticut. So tonight was pretty exciting.
I saw MIR when it was losing its orbit.
ReplyDeleteI took my family to Cocoa beach area not knowing the last shuttle flight was on the pad till it was too late to book the tourist bus ride to see it, dammit. We left the next day for my brothers place in Ft. Lauderdale.
ReplyDeleteBeen watching for satellites at night while camping since I was a kid. Red dots moving slow across the sky. Now you can see them nightly, back then if you saw one or two you were lucky and it was really cool.
Bear Claw
m9777 here: NASA has a website with ISS tracking info. I use it frequently to check for visibility in my area.
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