"Everyone of you listening to my voice, tell the world. Tell this to everybody, wherever they are. Watch the skies, everywhere, keep looking. Keep watching the skies."
That is the line that stoked fear in America with the movie The Thing. A few years later we would have Sputnik flying across the skies and a new kind of fear would grip us.
Today we don't have a space program to speak of, and neither do we have much innocent fear of UFO's, green monsters, or the endless blackness of space. What we do have is the International Space Station. It's not much. But for Boomers like myself raised with a hearty dose of skywatching, it's enough till something else comes along.
Boring 1 minute version.
Extra boring 5 minute version. Both are stultifyingly sleep-inducing. Watch at your own risk.
If you want to see the Space Station go overhead find the NASA.org site, click on the Track The Space Station (http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/) and if you plug in your town they will email you when it flies over. Be forewarned, Wataga or Aledo or North Henderson are not listed as cities. But Galesburg is. For those of you in the sticks just click on the Skywatch Tracker applet, and you can put in your exact location. Then when you get an email saying the Station will be over you at 4:36 am you can bound out of bed like you have been unshackled from gravity and view a white object floating overhead for 4 minutes. Sound fun?
LATER THAT MONTH...
Email said the Station was going to fly over at 7:01 on February 28th. It was a little overcast and a big old cloud threatened to hide the SS but then, there it was coming from NNW and heading South.
Only moderately boring at 2:40 seconds.
This is what I am reduced to down here in the ambient-lit city: watching a bright white object go overhead that at present has three Russians and a Canadian in it. But it's still kind of neat for this sky gazer geezer. And yes, I can still remember the night our family went outside in the front lawn and watch Sputnik go overhead. Neighbors were out that night, too. But a lot has changed. What's the point in having a dark foreboding space if there isn't anything spooky about it? But I'm still watching the skies!
That is the line that stoked fear in America with the movie The Thing. A few years later we would have Sputnik flying across the skies and a new kind of fear would grip us.
Today we don't have a space program to speak of, and neither do we have much innocent fear of UFO's, green monsters, or the endless blackness of space. What we do have is the International Space Station. It's not much. But for Boomers like myself raised with a hearty dose of skywatching, it's enough till something else comes along.
I've mentioned before how I would set the alarm for ungodly hours and set out alone to an area around Alexis that was desolate so I could watch a meteor shower, or a comet. Sometimes I would take the family, but more often than not it was just me. And I would scare myself silly half the time with an imagination best kept at home under the covers. After a few minutes of dark isolation in the middle of no where I'd be positively twitchy.
Today there isn't much of an opportunity to capture cool sky stuff. Back in the day we had Comet Kahoutek, Hale-Bopp, and Halley's Comet. And I was out there checking them all out. Some were spectacular, some fizzled out. Today all we have is the Space Station, and we even have to hitch rides with the Russians to be part of it. It seems a shocking and sad end to a history of space travel and exploration. I mean, what do you explore in an orbiting tin can only 250 miles up?
The above picture was taken by me on February 1st, above St. Petersburg at around 5:50 am. NASA lets me know when it is going to be overhead and it will tell you, too. It is a neat email they send you describing the degrees, direction it comes from and direction it goes toward and of course the time it arrives and the time it takes to streak the sky. Just go to http://spotthestation.nasa.gov and you can sign up for alerts on when it will be overhead for you.
I have a couple movies of the thing floating in the sky over me but they aren't good and to prove it here they are below. My camera isn't able to focus well and it doesn't give you perspective: the bright object moving across the giant sky is impressive, and can't be captured well by my camera.
Boring 1 minute version.
Extra boring 5 minute version. Both are stultifyingly sleep-inducing. Watch at your own risk.
If you want to see the Space Station go overhead find the NASA.org site, click on the Track The Space Station (http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/) and if you plug in your town they will email you when it flies over. Be forewarned, Wataga or Aledo or North Henderson are not listed as cities. But Galesburg is. For those of you in the sticks just click on the Skywatch Tracker applet, and you can put in your exact location. Then when you get an email saying the Station will be over you at 4:36 am you can bound out of bed like you have been unshackled from gravity and view a white object floating overhead for 4 minutes. Sound fun?
LATER THAT MONTH...
Email said the Station was going to fly over at 7:01 on February 28th. It was a little overcast and a big old cloud threatened to hide the SS but then, there it was coming from NNW and heading South.
Only moderately boring at 2:40 seconds.
This is what I am reduced to down here in the ambient-lit city: watching a bright white object go overhead that at present has three Russians and a Canadian in it. But it's still kind of neat for this sky gazer geezer. And yes, I can still remember the night our family went outside in the front lawn and watch Sputnik go overhead. Neighbors were out that night, too. But a lot has changed. What's the point in having a dark foreboding space if there isn't anything spooky about it? But I'm still watching the skies!
My Dad used to drag us out in the middle of the night to look at whatever was supposed to coming along, or if he was traveling, he would call to remind us not to miss it. I did the same thing with my own kids, although eventually it was only me. My brother makes treks to the desert to watch. Maybe it had something to do with growing up in the rural midwest where there really wasn't all that much to get excited about. Or maybe we were lucky enough to have parents that found the unknown fascinating. Either way, I'm still out there looking, sometimes in a parka, sometimes in my pj's. :)
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