Humanity Star - Coming soon to a sky near you

@sammydog01 - Oh yeah. I’m not sure if it will fly over at night.

@kdemo 6 am here. That’s not gonna work in March.

@sammydog01 I saw a brief reflection of a satellite at 9am on a sunny day here. Thought it was the iss, but after checking, it was not.

@brhfl - I hadn’t given the artistic perspective much thought, I see your point. I guess I’m just afraid of what it might unleash in the future.

Still pondering, though - of all the things that could benefit from art, I don’t think the night sky needs embellishment.
It just feels as if natural beauty is dwindling in (and now above) our world.

I’ll probably change my mind a few more times. lol

@kdemo I hear you. I have a lot of rather… loose, forgiving, inexplicable positions when it comes to art.

One of the many poetry classes I took in college, we had to read… jeez, I don’t even remember what it was, it didn’t leave a huge impression. A lot of us in the class tended to show up early to shoot the shit in the hallway; that day we were all freaking out, baffled by this nonsense we’d been assigned. We built each other up, gave each other strength for the impending shredding our professor would give any one of us when we couldn’t answer a damn thing he asked. He arrived, we entered the classroom, we sat down. He stated the name of the poem, we knew this was time. He said, ‘do you ever read something that just makes absolutely no sense… but it’s so beautiful…’

That was our lesson, I guess.

If I have a point, I suppose it’s just that at least a part of me thinks if we’ve put thousands of artificial satellites into orbit so that we can watch television and spy on our enemies… maybe launching one that’s just so beautiful is okay.

@brhfl

I kinda wish you could remember the name of that beautiful piece of word junk from college. : )

@brhfl - Love your story, you make a very valid point.
The sky is mysterious and magical to me, and I just fear that the stated goals for this project are insincere, and that the true motive is commercial. I’m surprised to consider that I believe more in science than art. I value both, but I guess I do have limits.

@kdemo They have designed it to fall to earth and burn up in the atmosphere…

@Kidsandliz I love ephemeral art, which pushes me closer to appreciating this demonstration of excess.

Low earth orbit is one thing, and lends itself to an ephemeral satellite.

Such a thing could easily be placed into geosynchronous orbit. It’s easy to say the government wouldn’t allow it, but capitalism would suggest otherwise.

That said, bright things in orbit still appear as dots. It would take a lot of dots to form an image in the night sky. I think the thousands of satellites we’ve already placed in geosynchronous orbit probably exploit us far, far more.

@f00l Likewise. Sigh.

@kdemo the one redeeming factor is that putting something into space is still pretty damn expensive so it shouldn’t happen much.

@kdemo

The sky is mysterious and magical to me …

I saw a falling star a few hours ago.

Both the science and the metaphor are beautiful.

@djslack - Can you tell what time of day? I think I read that the reflection will be visible at dusk and dawn because of the Sun’s angle.

@kdemo I’ll have to check it on a computer. The map was a little wonky on my phone.

@kdemo That sucks about the only dawn and dusk thing… It is going to pass me about an hour and a half before dawn. Guess not worth getting up for and driving out of town a bit. Sigh.

Hmm looks like the compass reading is what direction it is from you now rather than when it is visible at your location since it keeps changing. Too bad.

@Kidsandliz - My ETA says N/A. I suppose that means daytime.

@kdemo Well that sucks. Mine gives a time in central time and GMT both.

@kdemo try just putting in your city. That is how I finally got something.

@Kidsandliz - I was using my Zip alone. Typing my city returned this:

“You will not be able to see the satellite within the next 2087 hours. Please check again later.”

Humanity star is mad at me.

@kdemo My ZIP returned an error. Their map thingy is kind of screwy.

@kdemo

I ended my precise address.

Same message.

Which is odd, since it was passing along the East Coast when I checked.

---

Edit: Just entered zip code.

It worked that way.

@kdemo I got nothing with my zip as well. Did you try just your city?

@kdemo Oh wait I saw you already did that (city).

@therealjrn So I plugged in my zip code rather than let it use my location and it’s coming in 40 days or so.

@daveinwarsh Musk is launching his Tesla Roadster into space, does that count for anything?

@daveinwarsh - I was thinking a Pontiac Satellite or a Ford Galaxie.

@brhfl Yeah but he’s sending it to Mars, not leaving it in orbit

@brhfl

His Tesla Roachster?

(Ok, I love his projects).

They should launch this

@cengland0 Sky Guide on iOS is a great app for navigating the night sky, finding constellations, etc… and it will also send push notifications about the ISS.

@cengland0 YES! The ISS really moves fast and is very easy to see.

@cengland0 I love those apps. A good Iridium flare is a marvelous sight.

I thought it was called Sol.

@macromeh - Better call (it) Sol?

@macromeh In that vein, I stick to TSOL.

@f00l - Hoping the skies are clear enough here to see it. Not bloody likely.

@f00l Yeah, I saw that coming up. Most likely clouded over here too.
It’ll start here (Seattle area) at 2:50am, Maximum at 5:30am, Ends at 7:45am. Lunar eclipses last a long time!
Also… An Eclipse Never Comes Alone.
A solar eclipse always occurs about two weeks before or after a lunar eclipse.

@f00l Thanks for mentioning. Not much to see in my time zone, but people should know that an eclipse is only one of many awesome events. And those are just the ones in our tiny 1/XX,000,000,000th of this little galaxy.

@f00l - Be sure to watch the eclipse safely.

@kdemo I’m Facelifting this. Thanks.

@OldCatLady - No charge! It’s from spaceweather.com

@RiotDemon Um…up?

The map says for Tulsa: “The Humanity Star has the highest chance of visibility in 8 hours and 27 minutes. It will last about 6 minutes and 30 seconds. A more accurate viewing time for your location will be available within 3 days of the scheduled pass.”

To me it looks east of Oklahoma right now.

@therealjrn up is a little vague when it comes to viewing star sized objects. The map is not very phone friendly but it looks like the path its going to travel is south to north, which narrows it down a little.

@RiotDemon Well, truth be told, I was just guessing when I said up.

@therealjrn figured out the map. It’s not until tomorrow. There’s an error when I hit the button to send it to my calendar, the date/time is wrong. The star was already by Africa by the time I was looking. I might of had a chance if I was awake an hour earlier.

@RiotDemon @therealjrn according to the map right now it just came by for me, it’s over South America now. Would have been too light for you east of here so an hour earlier was probably right. Last night it said 6:14am for me.

I happened to get up at 6:12 so I went outside. It’s cold and I didn’t see anything. Except a sunrise, which I haven’t seen outdoors in a while. Doubt I get up to try again tomorrow though.

@djslack I saw some stars even though the sun was coming up. It does say dawn and dusk is best, I’m guessing since the Sun reflects off the ball. I might make the drive and sit on the beach. I could stay and watch the sunrise which I never do.