By Brendan Loy

Here’s my video of the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station flying over the Rocky Mountains Tuesday night, as seen from my backyard in Denver, accelerated to 5x speed with no sound:

Below is the same video at normal speed, with sound. You can hear us — meaning me, Becky, Kristy and Myk — talking about seeing the Shuttle & ISS before the crafts actually appear in the camera’s field of view. Discovery appears at the 13-second mark, followed by the brighter ISS at the 21-second mark. Their motion appears jerky because I was using “Super Nightshot” mode on my Sony Digital Handycam; in reality, of course, they move perfectly smoothly across the sky.

That brief bit of baby fussiness you hear, incidentally, is courtesy of Loyacita, who was being held by Becky. So we actually had five witnesses to the Great Brendan’s Backyard Double Spaceship Flyover of 2009. :)

Anyway, as I mention at the end of the video, we felt very lucky to get the great view we did. A short time beforehand, the sky looked like this:

And then it started to sprinkle, just five minutes before the flyover. But when the ISS and Shuttle appeared, the rain stopped, and the clouds in the crucial area of the sky had cleared out nicely, as you can see in this enhanced version of this 23-second exposure:

The brighter portion of the line at left is the path of the ISS over the photo’s 23-second time period; the dimmer portion at right is the path of the Shuttle; and the brightest part, in the middle, shows the part where they overlapped — roughly the first 10 seconds of the Shuttle’s path, and the last 10 seconds of the ISS’s.

You can see this same effect more clearly in a tightly cropped close-up from the next photo, a 24-second exposure, revealing that the ISS was just ever-so-slightly “above” the Shuttle:

More photos here (23-second exposure) and here (32 seconds).

It was an awesome sight, as advertised. Let’s do it again tomorrow night! :)

P.S. If you’re wondering where the Shuttle & ISS actually were during the above video, here’s a ground plot:

So basically, they were directly over Utah and Wyoming. Tomorrow night, they’ll be further apart, but brighter because they’ll be closer to Denver (getting as close as 235 miles away, as opposed to 345 miles tonight).

P.P.S. Here are the Heavens-Above flyover information pages for Tuesday’s passes by the Shuttle and the ISS, respectively. They are shown as being 13 seconds apart in the sky, which is precisely what we observed.

On Wednesday, they’ll be more than five times further apart — 72 seconds instead of 13 — but they’ll also be four times brighter, according to Heavens-Above’s estimates of their visual magnitudes: -1.4 instead of 0.1, in the Shuttle’s case, and -3.4 instead of -1.9, in the case of the ISS. This difference of 1.5 visual magnitude units translates to 4x brighter via the formula for apparent magnitude.

UPDATE: More on tonight’s flyover in a new post here.

UPDATE 2: More flyover photos here.

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

The sky cleared perfectly, and we saw the Shuttle and Space Station!! Very neat. Photo & video to come.

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Partly cloudy skies right now. Crossing my fingers for the 8:47-8:51 ISS/Shuttle flyover.

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

http://twitpic.com/h0stj – Clouds, clouds, go away! I’ve got spaceships to see!

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

It’s Week 1, and BYU is officially in the BCS championship conversation. That itself is historic. Boise, Utah were never even in the conversation till after bowls.

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

RT @gocarolina06: BYU #9 … Notre Dame #18 … C’mon Mormon vs Catholic national title game! The alcoholics vs the alcohol-less

By Brendan Loy

To my mild surprise, both the AP sportswriters and the USA Today coaches’ poll voters have, in a rare display of good judgment, moved BYU, formerly #20 and #24 in their respective polls, ahead of Oklahoma, formerly #3 in both, as a result of the Cougars’ victory over the Sooners on Saturday. Here’s the AP poll, which isn’t part of the BCS formula; here’s the coaches’ poll, which is.

I had thought the Bradford injury would give at least the coaches, if not the AP voters, the perfect excuse to keep 0-1 Oklahoma ahead of the 1-0 BYU team that beat it. But instead, BYU is now #9 and #12 in the polls, respectively, whereas Oklahoma has fallen to #13 and #14, respectively.

This is significant because it suggests that, if BYU and OU both win out, there is at least a chance that the Cougars will stay ahead of the Sooners in the polls (and thus most likely the BCS). I say “at least a chance” because it’s equally possible that, in such a scenario, OU would leapfrog BYU after one of its big wins — over Texas, say** — with the Bradford injury (and schedule strength) being used to justify such a move despite BYU’s neutral-field win over OU (and its perfect record).

One intriguing possibility, in light of BYU’s higher ranking (and greater distance from OU) in the AP poll as compared to the coaches’ poll: if both teams win out, what if undefeated BYU finishes #2 in the AP poll, but #3 in the coaches’ poll and the BCS, behind one-loss Oklahoma? Then let’s say Oklahoma beats previously undefeated #1 Florida/USC/whomever in the championship game, while BYU wins its BCS bowl (against, let’s say, #4 Texas in the Fiesta Bowl). Do the Cougars win the AP championship, Trojan-style?

Of course, it’s entirely absurd to be talking this way about a 1-0 team, so ridiculously early in the season. If BYU gets past Florida State, they will probably lose a game in the tough Mountain West conference, and this will all be moot. But if they don’t, the possibilities are fascinating.

**Upon further review, the Red River Rivalry game is probably too early (October 17) for this. More likely candidates for a “leapfrog game” would be Oklahoma State (November 28) or the Big 12 championship game (December 5).

P.S. Boise State, by the way, jumped from to #14/16 to #12/11 with its win over now-unranked Oregon. So the Broncos are ahead of the Cougars in the coaches poll, but behind them in the AP poll.

Oh, and USC is #3 in both polls. And Notre Dame is #18 in the AP poll, #20 in the coaches’ poll. If the Irish can win their next four games against unranked* teams — a very big if — the October 17 game against USC will almost certainly be a matchup of Top 10 teams, and will be almost as heavily hyped as the October 15, 2005 “Bush Push” game. Wake up the echoes! Shake down the thunder! And then of course USC will win anyway. :)

Meanwhile, the SEC has its typical early-season stranglehold on the rankings, occupying 3 of the top 6 spots in the AP poll, and 4 of the top 9 spots in the coaches’ poll. It’s a WAR, people, a WAR!!

*Michigan State is on the cusp of the rankings — first in the coaches’ poll’s “others receiving votes” category, second in that category on the AP side — and will very likely be ranked by the time they arrive at Notre Dame Stadium in two weeks, assuming they beat Central Michigan on Saturday, since somebody in the bottom half of the Top 25 will presumably lose next week.

P.P.S. Back to BYU for a moment. Thinking ahead… assuming they beat Tulane on Saturday, they’ll move ahead of the USC-OSU loser in both polls next week, and if they beat Florida State in two weeks, they should leapfrog at least Boise State in the coaches poll. So they should be in the Top 10 in both polls, two weeks hence, if they win their next two games.

Then they just try to keep winning, and meanwhile watch and wait as the big boys beat each other up. All the teams ahead of them are from the Pac-10, SEC, Big 12 or Big Ten — not an ACC or Big East team in sight. So, at worst, an undefeated BYU should rise by attrition to #5, and probably higher, since it’s unlikely those conferences will all have unbeaten teams still standing at, say, the beginning of November. It’s quite likely the Cougars would make it to at least #3 by attrition by then, if they keep winning.

Then the question becomes whether they get leapfrogged in November or December by a big-conference team with one early loss, the obvious candidates being USC (if they lose to Ohio State, then win out), Ohio State (if they lose to USC, then win out), or Oklahoma (creating the BCS debate to end all BCS debates). My guess: if it’s USC, they get leapfrogged. If it’s Ohio State, they don’t. If it’s Oklahoma, the world explodes. (And if it’s USC, and BYU gets leapfrogged, the world survives but my head explodes.)

BYU’s remaining big games, by the way, are all at home — on September 19 (vs. Florida State), October 24 (vs. TCU) and November 28 (vs. Utah). Though if the Mountain West Conference had any sense, they would move the BYU-Utah game to December 5, and find a way to get it on the ESPN Family of Networks, with all the attendant hype from the ESPN Hype Machine that such a move would entail. I realize the conference wants to promote its ridiculous “The Mtn.” network, but for chrissakes, if the 2009 edition of the Holy War is a battle between two undefeated Top 5 teams contending for a national championship berth, and yet it’s in TV exile on a channel that nobody gets, with zero hype from ESPN, the week before all the cool kids are playing title games, they’re asking to get jobbed by the powers-that-be.

By Brendan Loy

The Space Shuttle Discovery is set to depart from the International Space Station this afternoon, with undocking scheduled for 3:26 PM EDT and final separation at 5:09 PM EDT. Then the fun begins.

All across the contiguous 48 states, assuming the sky is clear (or at least clear enough to see Venus — thin, wispy clouds are OK), there will be opportunities tonight to see the spacecrafts fly overhead in tandem, in some cases multiple times. According to this article, the Shuttle will be leading, the ISS trailing.

As I’ve written before, it is very cool to see these “two distinct, bright dots, moving briskly across the evening sky in tandem — two unmistakable beacons of the human presence in space.” Unlike some of my skywatching tips, this one isn’t just for total nerds:

Trust me: even if you’re not into dorky stuff like Iridium flares, this is well worth a trip outside at the proper time, if the sky is clear. (And you don’t need to be in a low-light-pollution location to see them. They’re very bright. So long as you’re not standing, like, directly under a streetlight or something, you should be able to see them, even from downtown in a major city. Basically, if you can see Venus, you can see the ISS and Shuttle.)

Less than three hours after final separation, the pair of spacecrafts should be visible all along the East Coast, between 7:40 PM and 7:48 PM EDT, depending on the viewer’s location (further south = earlier).

Roughly 90 minutes after that, another double flyover will be visible all across the eastern two-thirds of the country, between 9:10 PM and 9:20 PM EDT (8:10-8:20 CDT). Again, further south and west = earlier.

After another 90 minutes go by, yet another double flyover will occur, this time visible from the entire western U.S., including right here in Denver, from 8:44 PM to 8:51 PM MDT (7:44-7:51 PDT). Again, the further south and west you are, the earlier in that time range the flyover will be.

Finally, after still another 90 minutes, the Pacific Northwest (which should be able to just barely see the previous flyover, close to the horizon) will get its own flyover, looking west over the Pacific at 9:20-9:23 PM PDT.

So basically, almost everyone in the 48 contiguous states should have a chance — if the sky is clear, of course — to see the ISS and the Space Shuttle flying together tonight. The four viewing opportunities I’ve mentioned are, respectively, roughly 2 1/2 hours after final separation, 4 after afterward, 5 1/2 hours afterward, and 7 hours afterward. In all cases, the Shuttle & ISS should be quite close together in the sky, and a stunning sight to behold.

If it’s cloudy tonight, never fear: there will be more viewing opportunities tomorrow. But of course, the ships will be somewhat further apart by then. Tonight is definitely the best night to try and see them, if you can.

To find out the exact time of your local flyover, and where in the sky you should look, you can use the Simple Satellite Tracker — just enter your ZIP code, and look for “ISS-Discovery” on tonight’s list of flybys.

Or, for more detailed information, enter your location here and click “Search.” (If you’re outside of the U.S., you’ll first need to select your country here.) Then pick your location from the resulting list, and then click under “Satellites” where it says “10 day predictions for: ISS.”

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

http://twitpic.com/gys97 – I hope it stays this clear for the ISS & Shuttle double flyover tonight!