Shuttle-gazing on a midsummer night's eve

This has nothing to do with marketing or Apple. Instead, it's about seeing amazing things in your own back yard.

Few of us, other than Mark Shuttleworth, Richard Branson, or Bill Gates, have $20 million in disposable cash to visit the International Space Station (ISS). But you can see the ISS for free -- in fact, it probably is in your own back yard.

That's what my family and I have been doing this week. When we heard the Space Shuttle Atlantis was docking with the International Space Station, I visited heavens-above.com and looked up when the two vehicles would pass over our home in Stow, MA. And unlike some of the other missions lately, this one actually had nice high passes to see. So we caught our first glimpse of the two vehicles docked just after 10 pm on Sunday night. They appeared as a very bright, fast-moving planet rising to about 30 degrees above the horizon; they traversed our entire sky in less than five minutes. That sight combined with the newly appearing constellations of fireflies in our yard created a magical experience.

Of course, anyone who has been following this mission knows that Atlantis undocked from the Space Shuttle yesterday, so we went out last night to see what we could see during its last scheduled night in space. This pass was even better than the one on Sunday; it was scheduled to rise to 89 degrees. That's one degree away from directly overhead.

This time, a very bright speck appeared on the horizon, followed by a slightly dimmer one trailing it by about 5 degrees or so. They grew brighter and brighter until, when they were directly over our heads, they outshone nearby planets Venus and Jupiter and rivaled the brightness of the half moon. The brighter of the two vehicles was the space shuttle; it is usually the brightest object in the sky when visible, because it typically flies with its white side facing the sun for heat management purposes. The ISS was less bright, but had more colors in its image, largely due to the reflections off its solar panels. As they passed by our location, I told my family, "You're looking at two space vehicles, each traveling at nearly 18,000 miles an hour, and they both have people living on them." And after five minutes or so, they winked out as they passed into the earth's shadow.

There are many other space craft and satellites you can see on a summer evening (you can even see flashes from GPS satellite solar panels during the day, if you are sharp-eyed). And there are still two more space shuttle flights scheduled for this year . The next time you have a lovely cloudless summer's evening, turn off your TV, go to heavens-above.com for a schedule, and then go outside and look up. You may be amazed by the things you see.

Technorati Tags: Astronomy, International Space Station, ISS, Space Shuttle