Last night I stood alone out­side my apart­ment, gaz­ing up at the sky, glanc­ing occa­sion­ally at my watch. The Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion (docked with the Space Shut­tle Dis­cov­ery) was sched­uled to appear above the hori­zon just after 7:40 PM. The unusual com­bi­na­tion of dark­ness, clear sky, and near-overhead max­i­mum ele­va­tion (86 degrees) made this a remark­able opportunity.

I shielded my eyes from the street lights, intently study­ing the pat­terns of dim stars that usu­ally escape my notice. City life can make the dis­tant sky unfamiliar—on a clear night I am more likely to notice a long queue of planes on approach to Logan Air­port than, say, Cas­siopeia. Pre­pared for dis­ap­point­ment and for­get­ful of which direc­tion to start look­ing, I was watch­ing for the slight­est rel­a­tive motion between objects when, right on time, it appeared in the west: a bril­liant point of shim­mer­ing light, a hun­dred times brighter than the stars, streak­ing speed­ily in a wide arc across the sky. A pass­ing band of St. Patrick’s Day rev­el­ers saw me star­ing open-mouthed at the sky, looked up, and fell momen­tar­ily silent.

“Holy shit, that was cool,” one of them con­cluded as the bright satel­lite flung itself effort­lessly over the city, beyond the reaches of our tallest build­ings, and faded slowly from view. Yes indeed.