The Night Sky

Note-Even though this already happened, you can still check out the satellite tracker website and see what upcoming events will be visible to you. The ones labeled 'Very Bright' are going to be the best.

This is just a quick post to let you all know that if you look up in the sky this evening, you might be able to see both the International Space Station as well as the Space Shuttle Discovery as the crew of the Discovery goes about replacing some of the solar panels on the station.

According to the very cool website, spaceweather.com, "Just before the two spaceships joined, Quintus Oostendorp watched them fly side-by-side over his backyard in the Netherlands."

He was able to get this amazing picture.



How great is that?

The exact times it'll be visible in your area can be found if you enter your zip code in the satellite tracker at spaceweather.com. And from what I can tell, it'll be visible for just a couple of minutes.

In just a bit, we're headed out on the roof so Joey can use a compass and protractor to figure out in what direction and at what elevation everything will be visible tonight. Maybe we'll even practice in the bathroom to figure out how to keep the shutter open on our camera.

This comes right on the heels of our day at the science museum yesterday, where we learned why it is that if you head out into space without your suit, your blood will boil and your lungs will explode. She didn't like seeing the marshmallow man expand in a vacuum, but it was pretty amazing to watch water boil at room temperature.

Honestly, my favorite thing about homeschooling is that I get to share in so much of this learning with her.