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Spotting the International Space Station in Movement- a Rewarding Experience

Wednesday, August 8th 2018 is a day I will remember fondly because it offered me the possibility of witnessing a remarkable event I hadn’t seen before: the International Space Station could be seen with the naked eye for a short while as, on its neverending journey on the orbit of the Earth, it was going to pass right over the sky of my country, and thanks to NASA  it was possible to know exactly when the ISS would be visible, but unfortunately the alert was available  for only four cities from my country, Romania.

Obviously, my hometown was not on that exclusive list, so I chose to receive notifications about the moment the ISS could be spotted from the city of Iasi, which is situated at about 170 kilometres away from my home, and they informed me that the ISS sightings would be possible from 9:15 to 9:19 PM, so at precisely 9:15 I was out looking at the fortunately clear night sky hoping to observe the man-made wonder, and soon I could see it: a tiny object wandering among the stars. I took a few photos of it, but it was so small that in some of those pictures I couldn’t see it, but it is visible in the lower  right side of this photo:

Of course, the enormous distance at which the space station was performing its flight made it impossible for me to see more than a small object moving in the sky at dizzying speed, but those few minutes in which I could observe it filled me with wonder and excitement as I realized that right inside that space object there were humans who had the privilege of flying above our planet and admiring it in all its splendour. Here is another shot at this tiny artificial splendour which rules the orbit of the Earth, this time in the lower centre of the picture:

It is definitely an experience that almost all of us can only dream of ever living and also a testimony of mankind’s determination to push over the boundaries of time and space and to reach new frontiers that will allow humans to accomplish other seemingly unattainable goals, such as colonizing Mars or even go beyond the limits of our solar system. Seeing the ISS high above the clouds, even for only three or four minutes, was a truly rewarding experience as it reminded me of how small our world is compared to the vastness of the universe which still a lot of secrets to discover!

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