Lights In The Sky

Early Morning Skywatching and Teaching Satellite Concepts to Sherpas
“I got up early today to see the ISS and Endeavour fly over my house. Its always cool to see them flying in formation like this. This morning’s viewing was at 4:48 am low in the North, so I was not sure I’d see things due to the brightening sky. As the two vehicles approached from due West I could only make out one fast moving light. But as the viewing geometry improved I was rewarded with two almost equally bright lights moving in clear association with one another – albeit briefly. Then the trees blocked my view. (My graphic is an attempt to draw what I saw.)
While I was waiting there for the flyby I thought back the film “The Right Stuff” where a group of wise aborigines ponders the night sky while sparks fly up from a fire. I wondered what sort of cosmology a modern stone age tribe in Borneo isolated from the rest of the world would think of all these lights in the sky moving in ways our ancestors would never have seen. Imagine what sort of cosmology they might have created to explain such lights.”

Note: This video was sent to me by a reader after they read my original article: “Here’s what you may have seen this morning – the Shuttle Endeavour leads the ISS, at about 4:50am (EDT) this morning. This handheld video was taken with my Canon S5-IS, with a maximum 12X optical zoom. It may not be “broadcast quality” but is presented as a tribute to the last flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour.- Michael Kowalchuk Ferdinand, IN”