Two nice passes of the ISS and space shuttle Atlantis tonight. The first was in twilight and the pictures didn’t come out. This later pass was low in the sky but allowed me to get this picture with several other interesting objects… including Earth’s natural satellite. The two tracks nearly blend together in the resulting image. Atlantis is scheduled to land tomorrow, so there will probably not be another opportunity to snag a picture of them for a while.
If you haven’t been out to see the space station lately, I encourage you to do so. It’s brighter than ever. This particular image doesn’t do it justice, but it’s easily as bright as Jupiter under most conditions and can rival Venus in some circumstances. The easiest way to find out when the ISS will be visible is to find a nearby city on NASA’s page. I use the Syracuse info even though that’s 25 miles away. It’s close enough to get me outside at the right time. You can also run an applet for your exact location.
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:39 pm
I also like http://www.heavens-above.com for finding various passes of various objects. It creates easy-to-read results which include sky charts showing the passage and a land map showing where the object is actually passing overhead. It also shows the estimated magnitude of the object.