I was eight years old when Sputnik was lauched. We went outside one evening and observed it going over head WITH THE NAKED EYE.
Poor Hillary, she comes up with these lame “I am the common person” stories and they make her look like a moron every time.
I’m not saying you couldn’t use the binoculars to observe, but finding Sputnik with them would have been very difficult.
Sputnik appeared as a dim star crossing the night sky. It was easy to spot because of it’s noticable movement.
I hate to burst your bubble but you were not watching Sputnik at all.
What you were seeing was the rocket booster that launched the Sputnik into orbit.
Sputnik could not be seen with the naked eye.
Actually what most of us thought was sputnik was it’s second stage booster. An earlier article stated the actual satellite was not visible to the naked eye. Also we pretty much at the time would call anything that moved Sputnik.
You were not really seeing Sputnik. The Russian engineers, interviewed on the anniversary, said you saw the second stage of the rocket. It was what was visible. I thought that pretty interesting.