Wow, that was cool! JR, Brittany, Karen, and I ran outside at 8:00 last night and watched the International Space Station go over, followed two minutes behind by the Jules Verne cargo ship. JR thought it was cool too! The ISS was so bright that it almost hurt your eyes to watch it. And it's getting really big too. You could sort of make out it's shape with just your eyes. You could definitely tell that it was no ordinary satellite.
The Jules Verne was considerably dimmer. It did look more like a regular satellite, but it followed the same path that the ISS took two minutes before.
They are both going over again tonight (the ISS at 8:30 and the Jules Verne at 8:37 from the west). They have been maneuvering the JV around, so that time may change a little, but the ISS will stay the same.
Tonight is the last night for a couple, but check out Spaceweather.com's Satellite Flybys feature to find out when they will be going overhead again.
You are right,that was awesome last night.Looked as though you could reach up and grab the International Space Station.I wonder if we could seen more if we would of had binoculars?Maybe not the cargo ship but the ISS!
ReplyDeleteI never expected it to be that bright and easy to see. It kind of surprised me. I never even thought about the binoculars. I have several pair rolling around here. One pair is just inside the door, within feet of where we were watching it! No way could I ever find/follow it with my telescopes, but binoculars would work great. I may even try to take a picture of it next time. With my 10x optical zoom (plus crappy digital zoom) might be able to get kind of a neat picture.
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