Heads UP: Rare visable double spaceship flybys, Atlantis/Space Station on Monday evening

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[Names Ash Housewares]

Space Weather News for Feb. 17, 2008 http://spaceweather.com

DOUBLE FLYBY: If all goes according to plan, space shuttle Atlantis will undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday morning, Feb. 18th, at approximately 4:30 am EST. This is good news for sky watchers across North America who will be able to witness a rare double flyby on Monday evening. Atlantis and the ISS will appear as a tight pair of lights, as bright as Jupiter or Venus, gliding in tandem across the twilight sky--an unforgettable sight. Favored cities include Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas, Jackson (MS), Pensacola, Philadelphia, Reno, San Diego and others. Double flybys continue on Tuesday, Feb 19th, albeit not as tight because the shuttle will be moving away from the ISS as it prepares to land on Wednesday, Feb. 20th.

You can receive telephone and email alerts when the spacecraft are about to fly over your backyard by subscribing to Spaceweather PHONE (http://spaceweatherphone.com) or look for flyby timetables at Heavens Above (http://heavens-above.com). And should you miss the event, visit http://spaceweather.com for images and movies.

[Names Ash Housewares]

Select your city here for exact time. ISS stands for International Space Station and STS-122 is Atlantis.

http://www.heavens-above.com/

[Dad yer funny]

FR bookmark , .. .. ((”down to the beach!”))

[SuziQ]

We saw the ISS go by on Saturday night, and it was just awesome! The sky was absolutely clear, and we got a full five minutes unobstructed view of it. I don’t know if we’ll be able to see both on Monday night, because it’s supposed to be cloudy, dang it!

[r-q-tek86]

piing

[Bender2]

In the summer of 2005, a friend and I were out late night fishing on Richland-Chambers Lake in Central Texas. This was just after the shuttle Discovery had separated from the space station on a mission STS-114. It was the first one after the Columbia loss. Both Discovery and the ISS were very visible in the sky that night. It was a wonder to watch them until they disappeared when they went out of sunlight and into the earth's shadow.

A little later, I looked up and saw another object above. It was not as bright as the shuttle or ISS. It looked for all purposes as a satellite in orbit. However, instead of a steady, straight trajectory as all the satellites I'd seen before in orbit, this one was juking all about moving in a rough northeast to southwest direction.

I told my friend to look up and he saw it, too. The UFO continued to juke around on a zigzag path as it travel across the sky for several minutes before it too disappeared as it went into Earth's shadow.

To this day, I wonder what it was I and my friend saw up there. It was not like anything else I've ever seen in the nighttime sky.

I can recall as a child watching Sputnik (actually it was the satellite's trailing booster rocket also in orbit) in the Fall of 1957. That bright pinpoint of white light marching across the sky in a steady, straight line is seared forever in my memory. Yet over the next 50 years, I have seen many other space payloads, but never another like that juking one of Summer, 2005.

Over the years I've thought often about what the devil the dang thing was and why was it doing that jitterbug dance?

My best guess was it was a military payload doing that juke dance as avoidance to any possible hunter/killer satellite, but that is not something I have ever been able to find in any articles about space warfare.

I cannot believe what I saw was an alien spacecraft chucked full of little green, gray or polka dot guys and/or gals here to steal our secrets, babies, ice, water, molybdenum, supermodels or our only working copy of the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. It was not a scout for an invasion or a first cook sample tasting us before writing To Serve Man in his native tongue.

In truth, I do believe there is intelligent life out there in the universe. All those uncountable billions and billions and billions of galaxies and their googol (a 1 followed by 100 zeros) plus number of stars cannot help but over the billions of years since the Big Bang to produce several, if not, millions or billions of different intelligent lifeforms.

In my belief, they do not sit up nights worrying about us. I don't believe they are constantly coming here to watch us, but it would not be a life changing event for me if they showed up one day before I pass away.

Matter of fact... where are you guys? I want to know what that was I saw back in 2005 and I ain't getting any younger!!!

[wastedyears]

I’m staying awake for that.

[wastedyears]

I think I saw the ISS pass overhead when I lived in NY. I was in the schoolyard of my old elementary school, on my roller blades. I looked up, and I saw this blue dot moving on the sky.

It was pretty cool.

[Southack]

You may have seen a trash unit being ejected from the ISS (they fall and burn up in the atmosphere, but can move around quite a bit)...or perhaps one of the electrical experiments where the long “canvas” was eventually cut loose.

[Bender2]

Re: You may have seen a trash unit being ejected from the ISS (they fall and burn up in the atmosphere, but can move around quite a bit)...or perhaps one of the electrical experiments where the long “canvas” was eventually cut loose.

Nope, the orbit of the 'whatever' was nowhere near the Shuttle or ISS. It was a single point of light doing a jitterbug moving in a rough northeast to southwest direction that would bisect the Shuttle and ISS orbits, not parallel them.

[neodad]

Also here:

http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+States

[heartwood]

Thanks for the heads-up - partly cloudy here tomorrow, but the last time we looked for a satellite, we had a break, 80% cloud cover, but a clear track for the ship.

[RFEngineer]

I once observed two space shuttles flying simultaneously. THAT was cool.

[yarddog]

During the Summer of 72 give or take a year or so, I was lying on a blanket with a girl looking at the stars. (Yes that is all we were doing).

I happened to see a satellite about as bright as a normal star, going across the heavens. I too noticed it seemed to be zig zagging. After watching it for maybe a minute, I realized it acutally wasn't doing the zig zag, it was an optical illusion.

[Names Ash Housewares]

that sounds like a trick statement.

Assuming one was on the back of a 747?

[RFEngineer]

“Assuming one was on the back of a 747?”

Yep....I had gotten up early - right before sunrise to watch one in orbit come by.....lo and behold, I’m tracking it and the 747 w/piggyback flew right over at that very moment.

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting. BTTT!

[hole_n_one]

During the Summer of 72 give or take a year or so, I was lying on a blanket with a girl looking at the stars.

Once upon a time
A girl with moonlight in her eyes
Put her hand in mine,
And said she loved me so...
But that was once upon a time...
Very long ago

Once upon a hill
We sat beneath a willow tree
Counting all the stars
And waiting for the dawn
But that was once upon a time,
Now the tree is gone


How the breeze ruffled through her hair
How we always laughed
As though tomorrow wasn't there...
We were young
And didn't have a care
Where did it go?


Once upon a time
the world was sweeter than we knew
Everything was ours
How happy we were then
But somehow once upon a time
Never comes again....

Bobby Darin: Once Upon a Time

[Inyo-Mono]

Incredible! I saw the same thing in ‘05 and always wondered what it was. I remember back in 1969, my brother and I were camping on the Mt. Whitney Trail (in the High Sierra of California) and from our tents saw a slow moving light in the night sky, as big and bright as the full moon. My brother thought it was like a scene from “Invaders from Mars” but two days later when we made it down the mountain to the town of Lone Pine, we found out that it was a Russian satellite reentering orbit.

[Bender2]

Maybe some day... we'll both know.

BTW if I recall correctly, Lone Pine is one place other than the Four Corners area John Ford did a lot of shooting for his western films? If so, it is some wonderful countryside to admire.

[rockinqsranch]

I loved that song so very much, but by Tony Bennett. It was the flip side of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”. I always liked “Once Upon A Time better”.