On the 9th at 10pm you will find the crescent Moon in the west with Jupiter twenty degrees to its east, both lying in the lower portion of Leo. Mars and Saturn can be found a little east of south. The next night, all is the same except that the Moon’s now only eight degrees west of Jupiter, and on the 11th, five degrees east. So, by Saturday, there should be no doubt in your mind which bright dot is Jupiter.
Having checked out the planets, you gaze around the sky to see what else you can see. Hey, there’s the Big Dipper, and, what the heck... one of its stars is moving.
If you are looking about from a dark place, like in the country or somewhere like Yorkton’s Logan Green, where stars are plentiful, being distracted by the occasional moving star-like object is not unusual. Eliminating short-lived meteors, and noisy, multi-coloured flashing commercial airliners, we are pretty much left with satellites.
Satellites come in many forms and are exceedingly plentiful. Some 2300 operational spacecraft orbit the Earth, plus hundreds of thousands of spent rocket bodies and other pieces of assorted space junk used to get the satellites there (if you want to see what this looks like, go to ‘http://stuffin.space’ for a look in real time). Anyway, most of what you can see looking up from a dark place is one of those working satellites, and some can be pretty interesting.
In general, most satellites look like a star. Most move, and do so in a straight line in any direction. They can flash slightly and sometimes appear to wobble (an optical illusion). The brightest of these is the International Space Station (ISS) which be seen for a few days every few months passing over our location. It looks for all intents and purposes like a bright jet, but with solid white rather than flashing lights. Other satellites, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, are visible pretty much every night, but do nothing to stand out among the stars.
Another type of satellite sighting you may encounter is an ‘Iridium flare’, the momentary reflection of the Sun off of one of nearly 100 Iridium-surfaced voice and data satellites. Short-lived but extremely bright, Iridium flares are often mistaken for exploding meteorites. However, these flares occur very predictably, so much so that you can set your watch by them.
Nice, bright satellites pass overhead more than you would think, but with nightfall coming so late, you have to be out after midnight to catch any. As we get into the longer evenings of fall, I’ll try to remember to point out when you can get out and see our man-made moons floating by in space. Some of what you see overhead from your own back yard is closer than you think.
