One of my favorite pastimes during the warm months is to lie down in our backyard at night, watch the skies for passing planes, satellites and falling stars and have a drink or two. Until recently my favorite space object to watch was the International Space Station and the larger satellites. A few days a go a new object was added to my list - the ISS Toolbag. An astronaut lost her toolbag on November 18, 2008 and it has been added to the list of items to watch. It's visible with the help of binoculars. I haven't tried looking at it yet because of the weather and hope it doesn't crash into the Earth atmosphere before the weather improves.You, too, can track the times and items visible in your skies on SpaceWeather.com.
One of the good things about the Midwest--you have so many more stars out there! :)
ReplyDeleteAni, I don't know about the rural areas in Midwest but the urban areas everywhere suffer from light pollution. Humid and muggy weather present at most of the time during the summer make the matters far worse for someone who wants to enjoy the skies.
ReplyDeleteThe absolutely best skies that I have ever seen was in Byourakan in Armenia. I had never realized why our galaxy was called The Milky Way until then.
This is hilarious, in a good way.
ReplyDeleteToo much light pollution and clouds over here to get good views.