57°F

8:30pm

Went out tonight to see if there was any chance of imaging Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd. Light polluted skies combined with, well… just bad skies made for pretty bad imaging so I decided against it. Instead, I glanced around the skies with the binoculars checking out Jupiter and a few other things and happened to notice a very dim satellite. No big deal since satellites are very easy to spot during the early evening hours when we’re in the Earth’s shadow, but the satellites aren’t. As I followed it, I noticed a second satellite nearby. Again, nothing unprecedented until I realized they were headed straight for each other! Of course, I knew they weren’t going to hit but it still made for a really cool scene. They came so close that if I weren’t using the binoculars I wouldn’t have been able to tell that they didn’t cross. The view through the binoculars was surprisingly far more awesome than I thought it would be. Seeing the two man-made machines silently cruising around the sky above everything I’ve ever known with countless diamond stars as a backdrop, all within my tiny field of view – just amazing… Things like this really continue to instill me with the sense of wonder and adventure that I could never live without. Astronomy never seems to let me down in that respect ;)