Saw the strangest thing the other night...

[[AK]Sonic Boom]

Hi everybody:

Kind of a funky story. I was camping by Mt. Rainier at about 6000 feet a few nights ago to hopefully get a look at the meteor shower and found myself watching satellites as well.

As I was laying there I saw three satellites in tight formation! I could cover all three with my thumb held at arms length. I'm always happy to see even one satellite, but seeing three like that pretty much blew me away.

The only thing I can figure is that they must've been military satellites and they put up a backup for redundancy and then one started getting close to the end of its design life and so they put up a third.

Either way, I was amazed to see such a display of man's technology, to be able to get three objects to fly so close together at over 17,000 miles per hour.

I didn't have the equipment to get shots of the satellites, but here's a few shots from my campsite. I was on the top of a spire and had a 360 degree view and could see for probably a hundred miles. The Pacific Northwest in the summer is amazing.

Here's a shot I took from a campsite a couple thousand feet lower than mine.

And here are two shots from the actual campsite.

My view of Rainier. (BTW, Rainier is 14,000 feet high)

Looking the opposite direction at dawn.