Feb 09
5
First-Timers
Posted by Stephen5
Tags: cold, delight, joy, snow, space, winter
Last night I went out after dinner to take a photo of the International Space Station as it went overhead. NASA’s website told me when to expect it and what path it would take. I’d been watching the schedule for several days, but overcast skies prevented any actual viewing. Last night was the final opportunity for a couple of weeks, and to my delight it was a beautifully clear evening.
I bundled up against the cold and took camera and tripod out to the back yard, wading through knee-deep snow. I pointed the camera toward where I thought the satellite would appear, and waited. NASA told me the spacecraft’s track was from North-West to South-East, but that it wouldn’t appear visible until it was directly overhead, coming out of the earth’s shadow. Sure enough, a new star winked into existence right on schedule, a little ahead of where I’d anticipated. I took several 30-second exposures while it made its stately way across the sky, until it vanished just above the horizon. In the three minutes it was visible it had traveled 1,300 km.
It was just a twinkle moving across the sky, but it was my first planned, scheduled, photographed satellite sighting. It was exciting to think there were three people up there, maybe looking down as the sun set across the planet and they briefly moved from darkness into sunlight and back into darkness again.
I came in from the cold to thaw out. I fired up the computer to look at the photos and found an email from my brother, waxing poetic about his very first snowfall–a record 8 inches in London. Our family is no stranger to snow (see here, for example) and I’d just come in from stomping through at least twice the London depth, but it was refreshing to see a first-timer’s perspective, the delight and wonder and sheer exhilaration of going out to play in the new snow. The beauty, the whiteness, the quiet.
We have our own first-timer. Micah is enjoying his first winter where he’s aware of his surroundings, where he’s tall enough to see out the car window, and where he’s able to comment. We went out for a drive after the first snowfall of the season and he was exclaiming non-stop about the snow: Snow on cars! Snow on trees! Snow on houses! Snow on the road! Such excitement!
The ground has been covered with snow for months and it’s kind of old hat to Micah now, but for a couple of weeks after that first snowfall he would pull himself up on the furniture every morning to gaze out the window at the snow.
Last night proved to have some surprises for us, the winter veterans, who have supposedly seen it all before. During the night the temperature dropped quickly from about -5
