Good evening, Kibitzers! Some weeks ago, when it was dark much earlier than it is in April, I was at my office late, working until the traffic died down. I was speaking with a colleague when suddenly, my boss raced out of his office and headed toward the break room, hollering over his shoulder, “Space station!!!” We looked at each other, and then we followed him. He was busy shutting off the lights in the break room when we got there.
It turned out that he follows the International Space Station via one of the several websites/apps that track it, and he had just received warning that the ISS was about to pass overhead. Sure enough, we could see it plainly through the big windows, there on the 9th floor with no trees in the way.
It can be a bit trickier to see it from home. At my house, the view of the sky is obstructed in some directions, and will be even more so when the trees get leaves. But when the sky is clear, it’s not too hard to walk down the road and reach a spot where there’s a clear view of the relevant part of the sky. Here, I’ll show you the information you get…
The website I’m using is the one my boss showed me: ISS Astroviewer. (There are a couple of others — you can google.) This one’s home page shows you the part of the earth astronauts are seeing at the time, although it is not realtime video. But what you need is the Observation tab. Mine is shown below; it takes a shot at guessing where you are, but you can enter your present zipcode and it will adjust. Yellow highlighting is mine.
It shows you a list of all the ISS passes in the next ten days that will be visible to you: at least 10° above the horizon, during hours when a) the sky is dark enough for you to see it and b) the ISS itself is still lit by the sun. So, evening and early morning, not the middle of the night.
When you click on one of the passes on the left, as I have done with the yellow-highlighted pass tomorrow, it shows more detail on the right, below the map. It gives the local times the viewing window begins, ends, and is at its highest point; the directions to look, and how high; and how bright the ISS will appear. You can see that this Wednesday’s pass looks good for me if the sky is clear: the five green bars show it’ll be about as bright as it gets. This particular track will be harder to see once the trees leaf out, but with branches bare, I’ll be able to see the whole thing from the back porch. The next day’s bright pass will be visible from my driveway and leaves won’t be a factor.
The ISS’s orbit shifts around, so your location will have times with no visible passes sometimes, other times evenings for a while, other times pre-dawn mornings. It’s not very difficult to spot. It’s a bright dot that’s moving at a pretty good clip in an unwavering arc in the direction described. It’s kind of fun to see it, and I am sentimental enough to wave.
This video gives a good idea of the kind of thing you’re looking for, although it’s more interesting when you’re seeing it in person. Here, ISS comes into view on the right and moves to the left, past the very top of the tree. This person has tracked the whole pass in three shots, so you’ll get lots of practice spotting it. Nothing else moves like it — your eye will pick it up.
Unsurprisingly, the ISS’s pictures of us are much prettier than our pictures of it, so here are a few I picked out:
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.