[meteorite-list] a story

From: Donald Blakeslee <blakesle_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:42:01 2004
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.20010117152607.007097ac_at_twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu>

I thought list members might enjoy in an anecdote I heard recently. A
former student, Bob Blasing, spent October in Australia. He spent part of
the time traveling with his nephew. They visited Ayres rock, an aborigine
sacred site in the Central Desert. While they were camped there, they went
for a nighttime hike in the desert. Nighttime hikes are an old habit with
them, as Bob took his nephew camping almost every August while he was
growing up.

During their hike the nephew suggested that they play a game thay had
played many times -- competing to see how many meteors they could see.
Just a few minutes later, the nephew asked "What the heck is that?" Fairly
low in the sky were two bright orange lights. As they watched, they began
to move up in the sky, slowly at first, then faster. As they approached,
the lights broke apart, and then broke again. Eventually, there were
multiple meteors, all traveling on parallel paths, streaking overhead --
hundreds of them.

Afterwards, they stood there for a moment with their mouths open. Then the
nephew said quietly, "I win."


When Bob got back home, he checked a computer program (Starry Night Pro,
which he recommends highly) for satellite orbits. The object turned out to
be a Russian spy satellite re-entering the atmosphere.

Don't you wish you had been there.


Don Blakeslee
Department of Anthropology
Wichita State University
Wichita, KS 67230-0052
Received on Wed 17 Jan 2001 04:26:07 PM PST