Space Station

13/09/2009

Last week lots of people who’d never thought to look up at the sky on a clear night before suddenly found themselves staring upwards after dark, having heard on the news, or read here on the net, that the space shuttle Discovery and the space station could be seen crossing the sky together, as a pair, after dark. I posted a story about it here on CUMBRIAN SKY, and after the post was picked up by some astro news-feed sites my post was being viewed by hundreds and hundreds of people all around the world, all hungry for information about how they could join in the fun.

This was a bit surprising, to say the least. “Space station spotting” has been a popular hobby amongst amateur astronomers and skywatchers for a few years now, but it suddenly seems to have taken off – excuse the pun! – in a big way.  IN the past week I’ve had lots of emails and comments here on my blog from people asking how and when they can see the space station next. Well, here is your updated, simple guide to the new international sport of Space Station Spotting!

Many people are amazed to learn that you can see the International Space Station in the sky above Cumbria – in fact, from all across the UK, and around the world. It’s not there every night, and when it is visible it looks more impressive on some nights than on others, but at its best it is literally a stunning sight – a brilliant “star”, often the brightest thing in the sky, as bright as a lantern, sometimes even brighter than Venus, that slowly glides across the sky from west to east. It really is a stunning sight, and many people now make an effort to find out in advance when the ISS will be visible from their garden, or town, and even head out into the countryside – or just to a local park – to enjoy watching it without light pollution ruining the view.  If you are one of them, you’ll already know how beautiful the ISS can look, just as you’ll know how to find out the times of “ISS passes” in advance, allowing you to plan where and when to observe it crossing the sky. But if you’re a newcomer to the hobby, and haven’t a clue where to start, this guide is for you.

First, what IS the ISS?

This is the International Space Station as seen through the window of an approaching space shuttle…

You can see it’s nothing like the graceful, wheel-shaped space stations from science fiction films like “2001 A Space Odyssey!” That’s because a) we can’t afford to build one of those, and b) it doesn’t have to be. The ISS is a workplace, a laboratory where astronauts live and work and do experiments in space. Let’s look at it a little more closely…

You’ll see it’s made of many different parts, and has bits sticking out of it everywhere. The most obvious parts are the huge “wings” on either side are its solar arrays – they power the space station by collecting energy from the Sun. Between the solar array “wings” are lots of tubes or cylinders, all joined together, called “modules”. These are the sections the astronauts live and work in. They’re pressurised, like the inside of an airliner, so the astronauts don’t need to wear spacesuits, they just wear normal clothing. If they go outside they put on a spacesuit.

Just like a huge Mecanno model, the ISS has been built over many years, piece by piece. Those pieces have all been joined together in space, making it Mankind’s most ambitious, complicated and risky construction project ever. And you can see it crossing the night sky, like a bright star.

But how come we can see something so far away, so high above the Earth?

Well, that’s the key – because it’s so high, hundreds of miles above our heads, it’s still in sunlight long after darkness has fallen down here on the ground, and that sunlight reflects off its enormous solar panel “wings”, just like sunlight glints off an airplane, or a mirror, and makes it visible to us in the night sky.

You’ve probably seen the International Space Station – we usually abbreviate it to ISS – many times without even knowing what it was. Lots of people who are out and about after dark have seen the ISS drifting through the heavens, but thought it was ether just an airplane or a normal satellite. Of course, many people have also seen it and thought it was a UFO!  But the truth is even more amazing – that “bright light” sailing across the starry sky is a man-made structure, a huge, incredibly complicated manned spacecraft that is home to astronauts from many different countries. The ISS is nothing less than science fiction come true – a permanently-manned outpost in space.

In recent years, as it has grown larger and larger, and brighter and brighter,  ”ISS-spotting” has become a great hobby among amateur astronomers and skywatchers, but you don’t need to be an astronomer – with a deep knowledge of the night sky and expensive equipment – to enjoy following the ISS as it flies through the constellations. All you need to know is what time to start looking for it. Yes, it really is that simple! All you need to do is know in advance what time you need to go outside – then you can just stand there and watch the show!

WHAT EQUIPMENT DO I NEED?

NONE! The best thing about ISS spotting is that you absolutely don’t need a telescope – in fact a telescope is pretty useless for ISS-spotting because the ISS moves, and it’s very hard to keep it in a telescope’s high magnification eyepiece. If you have a pair of binoculars tho, you should definitely try training them on the ISS – they will make it look much bigger and brighter, and enhance its colours too. ( Colours? Yes; those highly reflective solar panels are made of shiny gold material, and they give the ISS a golden hue as it crosses the sky. And when the station starts to fade, it can turn – especially in binoculars – a dark ruddy colour, and looks like a fading ember in the darkness of the night…)

Ok, so having read all that I’m sure you want to see the ISS for yourself! What exactly do you do? Here’s your guide to seeing the International Space Station.

To see the ISS you need to do the following:

1. Find out what time the ISS will rise above your local horizon (see below).

2. Go outside 5 minutes BEFORE that time to let your eyes get used to the darkness.

3. Face the WEST (ish… sometimes the ISS rises in the SW, but face roughly west and you won’t go far wrong)… and wait. Eventually you’ll see a “star” rising up from behind that western horizon, or appearing just above it. That will be the ISS! Simple as that!

4. Just watch the ISS drift across the sky, and enjoy it!

Simple, isn’t it?

Well, yes, it is, really, but there are some things to bear in mind tho. Firstly, going back to #1 on our list above, the ISS isn’t visible EVERY night. There are ISS spotting “periods”, blocks of a week or so when it is clearly visible in the sky.  But it’s not exclusive to the NIGHT sky: sometimes it is visible before sunrise instead of after sunset, so you’re looking for it in the very early hours instead of after dusk.

I know, that sounds confusing! How are you supposed to know when to look?! Well, thankfully we can predict these “observing windows” well in advance, and there are several websites on t’internet that will tell you, after you’ve entered your location, exactly when and where to look for ths ISS. But to save you time, I’m going to post that information here, on this very page.

Also, you have to bear in mind that not every “pass” of the ISS is going to be spectacular. Sometimes it almost flies overhead, but on other nights it only climbs slightly above our horizon. This means that sometimes the ISS is stunningly bright, so bright it can cast shadows from a dark site, but on other occasions it looks barely brighter than the bright stars in the sky beyond it.

The BEST passes to observe are the ones when the ISS is going to be high above the horizon, because that’s when it will be most fully illuminated by the Sun.

Okay, let’s look at the most important part of the whole thing – how you find the times of ISS “passes” visible from where you are. are the times you need.  

 

It’s almost embarrassingly easy. All you have to do is go to a website – and there are several – that calculates the times of ISS passes for your area. You either a) select your town or city’s name from the site’s list, or b) enter your geographical co-ordinates, and then the website does the rest. Yes, it really is that simple.

 

Some websites will give you the information about upcoming ISS passes in very easy to understand language. They tell you when to start looking, how bright it will get, and don’t decorate that basic info with any frills. Other sites will present you with a table of much more detailed information – rising time and direction, time when it’s at its highest, time and direction it will fade from view, maximum brightness, etc. Clicking on a blue-highlighted link will even bring up a simple chart of the sky, showing the ISS’s track across the sky. This is really helpful for people who have some knowledge of the sky and want to know in advance how close it will fly above or below a particular bright star, or planet, or even the Moon.

 

Here are the best websites I’ve found for predicting the times when the ISS will be visible from where you are.

 

NASA’s Satellite Prediction website:

 

Go to this website and you’ll see this opening screen:

 

 

Look on the left and you’ll see there’s a place to select the country you’re in. If you’re in the US, you just click “Go to country” because the United States is already selected. If you live outside the US you just click on the downward pointing arrow to bring up a menu listing countries, then select yours, and click “Go to country”. When you’ve done that, a page like this appears…

 

 

… which is just another menu page, really. You select your state from here. That in turn will take you to another page listing towns and cities in that state. Select yours, and you’re almost done. And if you’re outside the US you select the area of your country you live in, and basically just keep clicking through the listings until you find the town or city where you live, or if it’s not there a town or city close to where you live.

 

Eventually you will be shown a page like this – finally, the times you can see the space station!

 

 

The page will tell you the date and time when the ISS will be visible, when to start looking, how long the space station will be in the sky for, how high it will get in the sky, and when it will vanish from view again – all you need to see the space station! What it doesn’t tell you is how bright the ISS will appear, but you can figure that out for yourself by just looking at the figures for “Duration” and “Max elevation”. The longer the ISS is in the sky for, and the higher it is in the sky, the brighter it will appear. Simple! Using that NASA website you will be guaranteed never to miss a good “pass” of the space station again – well, when the sky’s clear enough to let you see it, that is!

 

What other websites are there?

 

Spaceweather.com has this brilliant website you can use…

 

Flybys

 

It’s pretty much the same deal as with the NASA website. You have an opening page which asks you to enter information about your viewing site…

 

 

… and then you click through a few menu pages until you finally reach the information you want – when you can see the ISS:

 

 

Can you see something different about that page? It’s giving visibility details for satellites other than the ISS. That means it will help you find out when and where to look for the space shuttle when it’s in orbit, as well as the Hubble telescope and other spacecraft too. This site also tells you how bright the ISS will appear in the sky – very useful.

 

The third – and most informative – ISS-spotting website is this one, the one I use most of all…

 

Heavens Above

 

I use this site more than any other because it gives the most accurate predictions, and also lets you see a chart of the sky, showing exactly where the ISS – and other satellites – will be. You have to do a little more work to get started, but trust me, it’s worth it. Here’s the opening screen…

 

 

See where it says “Configuration”? That’s where you enter your viewing location. It’s really very easy – you can either dive straight into the site’s huge database of countries, cities and towns, or use a global map to identify your viewing location. After you’ve let the site know where you live, and chosen “ISS” from the “10 day predictions” list under “Satellites”, you’ll be presented with a page like this…

 

 

 

 

 

… which as you can see is packed with information! Rising direction and time, highest point, and more. But what makes this site worth using more than anything else is its chart-generating capability. If you click on one of the dates written in blue, over there on the left of the table, you get something like this…

 

 

… a chart that actually shows you where the ISS will be in the sky! It couldn’t be more simple if it grabbed your hand, took you outside into your garden and said “Look! That’s it! That bright star, there!”

 

 o, there you are, no less than THREE websites that tell you where, and when, to look for the ISS!

 

TIP: whichever site you use, start looking for the ISS shortly before the time given by the website you use, don’t leave it until the last minute. Sometimes the ISS can appear slightly early, you don’t want to miss it. Equally, PLEASE BE PATIENT! Sometimes the ISS “runs a little late”, so keep watching until you see it. Don’t give up after a couple of minutes and go back inside  

 

 

Ok, that’s it, that’s all you need to know! Now you’re ready to start ISS spotting! Let me know when you’ve seen it – and good luck!

 

 

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Right, enough blathering. When do you start looking? Well, here are the times for UK observers. If you live elsewhere you’ll have to use one of the websites I just gave you.

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BEST INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION VIEWING OPPORTUNITIES FOR OBSERVERS IN THE UK for SEPTEMBER 2009

Updated on September 9th:

Here’s a table showing the ISS’s visibility for the next 10 days…

 

If you click on that table you’ll see a larger (and easier to read!) table appear. You’ll see that the ISS is currently an evening object.