People in the eastern United States will get a great opportunity, weather permitting, to see the Space Shuttle Discovery launched into orbit Wednesday evening, March 11.

The Shuttle flight (STS-119) will be the 28th to rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and the glow of its engines will be visible along much of the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

To reach the ISS, Discovery must be launched when Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the ISS's orbit. For mission STS-119, on March 11 that will happen at 9:20:10 p.m. ET, resulting in NASA's first Shuttle flight of 2009 and its second consecutive nighttime (the previous shuttle flight, last November 14, was also a nighttime launch). This launch will bring the Shuttle's path nearly parallel to the U.S. East Coast.

What to expect

For most locations, Discovery will be visible by virtue of the light emanating from its three main engines. It should appear as a very bright, pulsating, fast-moving star, shining with a yellowish-orange glow.

Based on previous night missions, the brightness should be at least equal to magnitude -2; somewhat brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, which shines brilliantly in the south-southwest during the evening hours. Observers who train binoculars on the Shuttle should be able to see the rapidly moving shuttle resembling a tiny V-shaped contrail.

In the Southeast United States, depending on a viewer's distance from Cape Canaveral, Discovery will become visible anywhere from a few seconds to 2 minutes after it leaves Pad 39-A. The brilliant light emitted by the two solid rocket boosters will be visible for the first 2 minutes and 4 seconds of the launch out to a radius of some 520 statute miles from the Kennedy Space Center.

No matter where you're located, keep in mind that the Shuttle will not get very high above the horizon. In most cases, it will range from roughly 5 to 10 degrees. To get an idea of how high this is, make a fist and hold it out at arm's length. Place the bottom of your fist on the horizon; the top of your fist is 10 degrees

By location:

Southeast U.S. coastline:

Anywhere north of Cape Canaveral, I suggest viewers initially concentrate on the south-southwest horizon (if you are south of the Cape, look low toward the north-northeast).

Mid-Atlantic region:

Look toward the south about 3 to 6 minutes after launch.

Northeast (Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston):

Concentrate your gaze low toward the south or south-southeast about 6 to 8 minutes after launch. Of course, as the shuttle gets closer, its azimuth very quickly swings over to the southeast, where in most cases, the point of maximum altitude occurs. I suspect most people will be scanning the horizon from south-southeast in the final couple of minutes of powered ascent . . . if so, you shouldn't miss out on sighting Discovery.

Discovery will seem to flicker, then abruptly wink-out 8 minutes and 23 seconds after launch as the main engines shut-down and the huge, orange, external tank is jettisoned over the Atlantic at a point about 870 statute miles uprange (to the northeast) of Cape Canaveral and some 430 statute miles southeast of New York City. At that moment, Discovery will have risen to an altitude of 341,600 feet (64.7 statute miles), while moving at more than 17,000 mph and should be visible for a radius of about 770 statute miles from the point of Main Engine Cut Off, or MECO.

Should the launch of Discovery be scrubbed on Wednesday, March 11, the launch will be rescheduled on a daily basis, but the time of the launch will occur roughly 23 minutes earlier for each day the launch is delayed (launch window times through March 16).

Before hoping to see the Shuttle streak across your local sky, make sure it has left the launch pad! Watch a television news outlet to verify that Discovery has been launched, or you can watch the launch on your computer via streaming video from NASA-TV.

Good Luck!

Without a question of doubt, the most spectacular celestial sight during these final days of November is reserved for the early evening sky. One of my astronomy mentors, Dr. Ken Franklin (1923-2007), a former Chairman and Chief Astronomer here at the Hayden Planetarium often made reference to our dynamic and ever-changing night sky.  Such an eloquent description certainly fits our current evening sky, as we now have a celestial summit meeting in the making in the western evening twilight.

The highlight will be the gradual approach relative to each other of the two brightest planets—Venus and Jupiter—with the waxing crescent Moon joining them on the first evening of December.  For the remainder of November, skywatchers will observe Jupiter and Venus slowly converge on each other in the southwestern sky, right after sunset.  Venus and Jupiter will appear a similar distance apart on both the evenings of November 30 and December 1.  The moment of closest approach will actually come during the early morning hours of December 1, unfortunately when this dynamic duo is below the horizon for North America.  They'll be separated by just over 2°, which corresponds to roughly one-half the distance that separates Pollux from Castor, the Twin Stars of Gemini (The width of your fist, held at arm’s length roughly corresponds to 10°).

The pinnacle, however, will come on early on Monday evening, December 1.

Every once in a while, something will appear in the night sky that will attract the attention of even those who normally don't bother looking up.  It's likely to be that way on that Monday evening when a slender crescent Moon, just 15% illuminated, will appear in very close proximity to Venus and Jupiter.

People who are unaware, or have no advance notice, will almost certainly wonder, as they cast a casual glance toward the Moon on that night, what those two large, silvery stars happen to be?  Sometimes, such an occasion brings with it a sudden spike of phone calls to local planetariums, weather offices, and even police precincts.  Not a few of these calls excitedly inquire about the UFOs that are hovering closely in the vicinity of our natural satellite.

A very close conjunction of the crescent Moon and a bright star or planet can be an awe-inspiring naked-eye spectacle. Those involving Venus, Jupiter and the Moon—the three brightest objects in the night sky—always attract the greatest attention of all. Ken would have called it, A beautiful celestial tableau!

The English poet, critic, and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) used just such a celestial sight as an ominous portent in his epic, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  In addition, there are juxtaposed crescent Moon and star symbols that have appeared on the flags of many nations, including Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia, Algeria, Mauritania, and Tunisia.

Earthshine

Also on Monday evening, you may be able to see the full globe of the Moon, its darkened portion glowing with a bluish-gray hue interposed between the sunlit crescent and not much darker sky.  This vision is sometimes called the old Moon in the young Moon's arms. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the first to recognize it as what we now call Earthshine.

As seen from the Moon, the Earth would loom in the sky nearly 3.7 times larger than the Moon does for us.  In addition, the land masses, the oceans, and clouds make the Earth a much better reflector of sunlight as compared to the Moon.  In fact, the Earth's reflectivity varies as clouds, which appear far more brilliant than the land and seas, cover greater or lesser parts of the visible hemisphere.  The result is that the Earth shines between 45 and 100 times more brightly than the Moon.  The Earth also goes through phases, just as the Moon does for us, although they are opposite from what we see from Earth.  The term for this is called complementary phases.

On Thanksgiving Day, for example, when the Moon is New for us, as seen from the surface of the Moon, the Earth appears Full. A few nights later, as the sliver of a crescent Moon begins to appear in our western twilight sky, its entire globe may be glimpsed.  Sunlight is responsible for the slender crescent, yet the remainder of the Moon appears to shine with a dim blush-gray tone. That part is not receiving sunlight, but shines by virtue of Earthlight: the nearly full Earth illuminating the otherwise dark lunar landscape. So Earthshine is really sunlight which is reflected off Earth to the Moon and then reflected back to Earth.

Venus and Jupiter

Those using binoculars or a small telescope will certainly enjoy the almost three-dimensional aspect of the Moon, but Venus will be rather disappointing appearing only as a brilliant blob of light, for right now, it's a small, featureless gibbous disk.  That will change in the coming weeks, however, as Venus approaches Earth and the angle it makes between us and the Sun allows it to evolve into a half-Moon phase in mid January, and a lovely crescent phase of its own during the latter part of February and March.  Jupiter on the other hand is a far more pleasing sight with its relatively large disk, cloud bands and its retinue of bright Galilean satellites.

No question about it.  It will hardly be an evening spending time watching TV!  If the weather is clear between about 5 and 7 p.m. next Monday, be sure to get out and take a look.

When I was a youngster growing up in the Throggs Neck section of The Bronx, the Hayden Planetarium had a service called Dial-a-Satellite.  When you called a special phone number, you could hear a recorded message telling you when and where to look for the brightest naked-eye satellites that occasionally tracked across our local New York skies.  Back then (and I'm speaking now about the mid-1960s) the only really bright satellites readily visible were actually two giant Mylar balloons... measuring about 100-feet in diameter which orbited Earth at altitudes of about 1000 miles.

These were the Echo passive communications satellites: they actually functioned as reflectors, not transmitters. After being placed in orbit around the Earth, a signal would be relayed to one of the two Echo satellites, which were reflected or bounced off its surface, then returned to Earth. The Echo satellites were easily visible to the eye because of their highly reflective surface, but also because of their low orbits; they would appear from below one side of the horizon, cross the sky, then disappear below the opposite horizon after crossing the sky, as happens with all low Earth orbiting satellites. These spacecraft were nicknamed satelloons by those involved in the project. Today, those two Echo satellites are long-gone, but there are now literally thousands of satellites orbiting our Earth.

By far and away, the biggest object now orbiting our Earth is the International Space Station.  And if our skies are reasonably clear on Saturday, November 22, we here in the Tri-State Area will have a great opportunity to see the ISS make a long, high pass across the evening twilight sky.

It will be moving along a track that will take it roughly from Washington to just north of New York and then on toward Boston and the Gulf of Maine; it will briefly overfly our region about an hour after sundown.

It always amazes people when they are told that they can actually see the Space Station—now orbiting 218 miles above Earth—with their own two eyes; no optical aid is needed.  As big as a football field, the ISS is visible by virtue of sunlight shining on its metallic skin and large solar panels.  To the unaided eye it appears as a very bright star that does not twinkle and shines with a slight yellowish-white tinge. Check out this short video of it when it passed over Gloucester, Massachusetts back on Christmas Eve, 2006.

Some assiduous astronomers have even been able to photograph the actual structure of the Space Station by tracking it with their telescope:

On Saturday, the ISS will emerge from above the southwest horizon at 5:32 p.m. Prepare yourself for this ISS pass by getting outside some minutes before it's due to appear and getting yourself acclimated to the sky and the surrounding stars.  Certainly, you will immediately notice two very bright, non-twinkling silvery stars low in the southwest.  They are not stars, but planets; the brighter and lower of the two is Venus, the other will be Jupiter.  Make a fist and hold it out at arm's length.  When the ISS first appears, it should be roughly "two fists" to the right of Jupiter and Venus.  It will appear to move straight up to a point almost directly overhead.  It will then drop down toward the northeast, disappearing about 3-minutes after it first appeared, near to the northeast horizon.  It actually will seem to rapidly fade out toward the end of its track as it moves into the Earth's shadow.

As to just how bright it should get, it should be plainly visible even from brightly lit cities; only Venus and perhaps Jupiter will be brighter.  So during it's 3-minutes of visibility, the Space Station will be one of the three brightest objects in the sky!

And keep in mind that as you look at it, there are ten people who are currently onboard.  Three are semi-permanent residents, staying for upwards of six months on the ISS.  The other seven just recently arrived on the Space Shuttle Endeavour which was launched from Florida on November 14.  The Shuttle is currently docked to the ISS and is scheduled to return to Earth on November 29.

Pretty neat, huh? Tell all your neighbors... and take the kids out for a look.

I'll be interested to see how many plan to check it out, so drop me a line if you see it.