Tag: ISS

Views from Space

Views from Space

By |

The International Space Station orbits Earth at about 400 to 405 kilometers above us (accounting for monthly orbit decay and subsequent boosts), and makes about 15.5 trips around each day.  It is officially a Space Station, modular, and began its life in 1998.

Track the ISS

1998? Really? That recently? It feels like we have always had a space station if you are a Gen-Xer or younger. China has a manned space station in orbit, the Tiangong 1, and before those we had Skylab and MIR.

That’s Las Vegas as seen from the ISS. I happen to live in the dark square to the far right of the picture, just below center. How many of you have seen your home city as it appears from the International Space Station? Not the daylight shots that we get from a few miles or less in the air taken by Google Maps, but a nighttime shot from 250 miles above us?

Did you know you can even see the thing from Earth, and it doesn’t have to be pitch black. Depending on its particular angle in the sky and where you are, it appears as a silvery dot slowly flying through the sky, taking about 4 minutes to cross overhead when it’s directly above.Don’t ignore a look at this feat of human technology. There are people flying overhead, 20 times higher than in airplanes, working on scientific pursuits that have direct effects for us here on the ground. When you get a chance, go out and look at it, watch it pass overhead, and think of how far we’ve come in the last 50 years compared to the last 5000 years. From 3000 BCE to 1900 CE we didn’t make a lot of progress, although those who lived in 3000 BCE might dispute that compared to those in 1800 CE.

Yet in the last century or so, just a little more than 100 years, humans went from balloonists to astronauts. We went from the telegraph to the cell phone. We went from libraries to the Internet. We went from hard labor to robots. It’s downright scary in some ways, and miraculously amazing in others. That I can write this and send it all over the world by pushing a button is something I never even imagined until about 20 years ago.  Technology has opened up the entire world, literally. So go outside and look up when that space station goes by, and wave!

Like this post? Subscribe to the the blog and tell a friend – the more the merrier!

Yesteryear’s Science Fiction

Yesteryear’s Science Fiction

By |

https://t.co/VRLnUINSEI

Filling the Dragon

The astronauts are loading supplies into the vehicle that will leave the space station and go to Earth. I had fantasies about this kind of thing as a child. I suppose I should have dreamed about the day they cure all cancers, end poverty, stop making war, but those seemed too realistic (in all honest, thought we would have done it by now). But space travel to anywhere, and space stations in orbit, and filling out an application to be an astronaut?

For those of us who dream that humanity will not only survive but come out better in the long run, reality can be sobering. But looking back at history, we’ve made progress, at least in the modern world. We no longer burn witches at the stake, and there’s probably enough food for everyone if we can just overcome the governments and get it there when it’s needed. We can control reproduction, and we have antibiotics (at least we do for a little while longer). Small Pox is extinct. So are Guinea worms. But then, a lot of species have gone extinct for utterly stupid reasons; rhino horns and ivory come to mind.

I think now, what can be so astounding, is that we have The Internet, and people have the world’s knowledge at their fingertips, and ignore it. We went to the moon, and back. We’ve created and sent robots to all the other planets we share our sun with. If that can be done on the puny budget our world commits to science (oh, about 3% compared to 50% for the war machine), then imagine our future if the budgets were well balanced and people valued the science brought to us by space programs. See, now we’re back to dreaming about touching those stars!

Sky Guide

Sky Guide

By |

Sky Guide. It’s not free, but the small fee is worth it if you like celestial things. IMG_4035

Just a quick entry today about an app that I bet most of you have never heard of. Of course, there are plenty of sports apps and things I don’t know about. But this is cool for everyone who has ever looked up at the stars at night and wondered what the heck they were looking at.

This is a screen print from my phone of the app. I took it this morning, as you can see, the sun is in the east, and the sky is dark so you can see the stars. You can’t tell from the screen print, but it shows the constellations, planets, stars in real time. You can also set the time and date for almost any day in the past or future and see what the sky looked like at that moment.

If you tap on an object, such as a white dot, the name of the item will appear and you can tap again for a detailed description, including the type of star, its distance in light years, and its location in degrees and minutes.

If you want to search for something specific, just tap the menu icon and you are given choices of stars, satellites, planets, and more to search for! Tap the Satellites, and select the ISS. You’ll get a quick location and its path in the sky.

It has some ethereal music to go with it, and if you are sky watching, simply hold your device with the camera pointing in the sky. It will automatically orient itself and tell you exactly what you’re looking at. Point it toward a dot in the sky, you’ll discover you’re looking at Jupiter or Venus, or Regulus or Betelgeuse.

But don’t take my word for it. Go to the app store and check it out for yourself. Nothing is quite as fun as hearing a push notification that the ISS is going to be flying overhead in 5 minutes! What are you waiting for, go have some fun!

Looking for Something? Search the Site

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Get in Touch

Contact Us