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an artificial noctilucent cloud

Last night, I happened to step outside on my terrace for a breath of air, and saw a curious light high up in the sky; at first I took it for an outbound Kennedy flight, or maybe an NYPD helicopter. But then it seemed to emit a large vaporous exhalation, which glimmered briefly and then, like the point of light, was gone.

It turned out I was looking at a NASA sounding rocket. I feel rather privileged to have stumbled across this in this way, and briefly, before I turned to the tools of empiricism, I was able to regard the strange light as some ancestor on the plains might have, with a tremulous shudder of wonder and unease. This may launch some star-gazing (and, per Trevor Paglen, “the other night sky”) kick on my part, though New York’s probably the worst place in the world for it.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 7:38 am and is filed under Etc., Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “an artificial noctilucent cloud”

  1. Brent Says:
    September 20th, 2009 at 9:07 am

    There goes that NASA again, scaring the population.

    A couple of weeks ago, just about the whole of Los Angeles, where I live, was shaken by twin sonic booms during the shuttle landing. I thought for a moment some war had started…

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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