New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

A flickering candle light sails across the sky. First ice?

Monday 12/11/2006

It was just over 46 years ago that I saw my first satellite. It was called Echo I. Echo I was launched in August of 1960 and was a 100 foot round metal skinned balloon when inflated in space. It was used to test the ability to bounce radio waves off for communication purposes. It was the forerunner of today's multiple communication satellites.

My father Kenneth took me out into the star filled cool fall night in Mapleton Maine to show me this first ever visible satellite. Although my father was by career an airplane mechanic he was so much more a scientist. As a scientist he had an early hunger for the technology of aircraft and would see and participate in it's evolution into the Jet Age. But he was also a scientist in the biological sense. He had a whole collection of nature books including a series of colorful bird identification books which I own today. My father looked down to study our earth and up to study the heavens. No doubt it was his interest in biological things that sent me on my career of three decades as a wildlife biologist.

But I too enjoy looking up. Often my father would call me to say that the Soviet space station Mir was due to overfly us in Epsom at a certain time. I would be sure to be watching in my yard as I knew he was in his front yard a mile south of me.So a week or two ago the announcement that the space shuttle would be launching at night and travel right up the east coast peaked my interest.

My father has been dead over ten years but I certainly felt his presence as I stood in the dark casting my eyes up into the heavens over the sea in Rye when the Discovery craft was launched Saturday night at 8:47. In fact I had my home computer tuned into the NASA channel to hear the launch and called home to have my wife place the phone where I could hear it. There was not another soul around. I can't imagine not wanting to take advantage of this opportunity to see a shuttle launch. Thanks dad.

I gazed to the south five minutes after launch hoping I could see it as there was a cloud layer on the horizon out over the ocean. And suddenly, just seven minutes into it's flight, there it was. It was a glowing, candle colored orangeish-yellow flame, gliding across the horizon skipping across the cloud tops. It was obvious it was Discovery. And in just over a minute it swept across my whole arc of vision occasionally in the clouds until it seemed to be traveling straight away. It was awesome! Now I have a real sense of the power needed to get into orbit. I have driven to Florida several time, non-stop most times. I could really appreciate the force needed to fling this craft past me in just seven minutes then traveling at 17,000 mph.

By Monday even the larger local ponds and lakes had a skim of ice from the freeze that set in on Friday. Northwood Lake was essentially skimmed over with ice Monday morning. Temperatures have warmed considerably since Sunday so I wonder if this ice will stay. But it sure looks close to being the winter freeze. The ground remains unfrozen though. But we are on the very edge of winter and just ten days from the shortest day of the year.