APOD 3.8

Spacecrafts Streak Over Colorado

(2011 March 14)

This picture was taken at Lory State Park, Colorado, USA. This shows the night sky with two arcs across. These two arcs are the lights of the International Space Station (ISS) and the space shuttle Discovery, which had undocked from the ISS a few hours earlier. This apod talks about drifting "stars" and what they actually are. Most likely, if someone sees a slowly drifting "star" it is probably a spacecraft in low Earth orbit that is reflecting back sunlight as it is orbiting Earth. Two of the brightest spacecrafts today are the ISS and a NASA space shuttle when it is in the sky. Iridium communication satellites are also a common cause for these bright drifting objects. Sometimes they may also reflect sunlight or they will flare up when they are re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Websites like heavens-above.com can be a great way to identify these iridium flares and other bright drifting objects that you are unsure of. It was interesting to read of other objects in the sky that you might see besides meteors. The picture also showed a great view of the path of the two objects and the best part was when you move your mouse over the picture it drew out and identified the constellations that were currently in the sky. You could see Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Draco, Ursa Minor and Major, Camelopardalis, Leo, Leo minor, cancer and lynx. It really helps to have the constellations drawn out to help people who are still learning to see where it is in the night time sky. Even though starlab is a great way to learn the constellations in the sky, it's hard to take what you've seen there and try to find it in the real sky because it often looks different than it does in the lab.