Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Look! Up in the sky...

It's been all the rage on my favorite "Dale Gribble" site for a couple weeks where I've been following the speculation, conspiracy theories, and downright paranoia of the Holmes comet. But last night I finally remembered to go out and have a look. It was pretty cool actually, though it made me wish for a stronger pair of binoculars. Of course it's mostly just a big fuzzy ball, but you have to remember that it's a comet, way out there, that's visible to the naked eye. Cool. And it's easy to find, so go take a look.

While looking at info on the comet, I noticed that it was time for the International Space Station to be visible from Colorado. Sweet! I dragged Jessica and Alex out into the cold several weeks ago so we could catch a passing, and that was cool, but this time was going to be REALLY cool! Since the Space Shuttle had just seperated from the station Monday morning, and was on it's way back to Earth, both the Shuttle and Station were going to be visible! Even better, from Boulder, the elevation of the pass was about 85 degrees so it was going nearly directly overhead. Sure, it meant that I had to climb out of my nice warm bed at 5.30 this morning, but the view didn't dissapoint. First came the ISS, and sure enough, there was the shuttle just a few seconds behind. Very cool. Of course, both objects are just shiny lights in the sky, quickly and quitely move past at a good clip, but you know it's man-made stuff (that WE technically paid for)and that's cool.

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