On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 03:52:49 +0000, Larry wrote:

Skip Gundlach wrote in
oups.com:

A very slight haze had developed, and increased as we watched,
slowly obscuring our view, but we were constantly entertained,
including by seeing the transit of many satellites, in mostly
north-south orientation, but one which was more east-west. One
was very large - perhaps it was the space station? (No, not
really, as it's a very far-out orbit and would not move as fast
as these did. Like our weather satellites, these took only a few
minutes from horizon to horizon. As I type this, the one
overhead, delivering the current picture, will have finished its
path in our view in less than 8 minutes.) As this was a new moon
phase, we got the very best of the light pollution conditions
other than being well offhsore. There was a little light haze on
the horizon, which diminished the view somewhat, but otherwise
the conditions were excellent



The N-S birds are LEOs, low-earth-orbits on the edge of the atmosphere.
These include constellations of satellites for GPS, GLASNOSS (Russian),
Marisat, Iridium, Sirius and the other radio company, etc. The sky is
filled with them at differing altitudes to prevent collisions. The big
bird was the ISS, which I get an automated message from NASA on in email
every time it will be across my view in Charleston at dusk or dawn. It's
HUGE and getting bigger by the year. You don't even need binoculars to
see its solar panel array! It takes about 9 minutes horizon to horizon
if it's passing through your Zenith, less in arcs.

One of the coolest things was when the ISS was passing overhead, I
took my laptop w/wifi outside and was watching on NASA's website
astronauts working on the space station in real time. I could look at
the laptop and see them fiddling with something and then look up and
see a super bright star zipping across the sky.

Steve