Looking Up at the International Space Station

At 5:36 PM EST, ISS passed over my home.
It was visible for only six minutes,
appearing at 10° above SW and then
disappearing 19° above ENE on its journey
at five MPS, a mere 90-minute orbit,

which is how long it takes me
to drive SE to the Atlantic Ocean.
24 hours, 16 orbits, sunrises, and sunsets.
Standing tonight in the new November darkness,
my accelerating life feels momentarily, thankfully, slower.

Learn about ISS at https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/

A Graveyard of Stars

Image by scartmyart from Pixabay

Remains of many dead and dying stars
in a vast graveyard near the center
of our Milky Way galaxy in a
black hole where the dead feed on
others – like celestial zombies emitting X-ray howls.

Milky Way center —by NASA, ESA, SSC, SXC & STSCI

Read about the science

From a High Perspective

The third brightest object in the sky
tonight is the International Space Station.
It appears precisely at 5:37pm above South-Southwest.

If only my world was as predictable,
my orbit stable, looking upon all this.

The Atlantic east coast of the United States from the ISS. Easy-to-recognize cities include New York City and Long Island at the right and to the left Philadelphia, Baltimore,
and Washington DC near the image’s center.

If you want to watch the ISS pass over your home (it’s visible with the naked eye), check at SpotTheStation.nasa.gov

Earthrise In Earthshine

Before daybreak these mornings, two bright objects
of nighttime, Moon and Venus, are East.
Earthshine’s glow lights the Moon’s dark side
with this twice-reflected sunlight and Earth appears
a half-lighted landscape in the lunar sky.

 

This NASA photograph from Apollo 11 shows the partly-illuminated Earth rising over the lunar horizon. The Earth is approximately 400,000 km away.