Skies improving for space station flybys
Marylanders should have a decent and improving chance to see the International Space Station Thursday and Saturday evenings as skies begin to clear up in the wake of the latest round of May rain showers. Grab the kids, the neighbors, the neighbors' kids, and amaze them all with your knowledge of the night sky.
The first good opportunity will come Thursday evening as the ISS makes its way along an orbit taking it about 240 miles over New Orleans, Baltimore and Nova Scotia. The forecast here calls for partly cloudy skies. But the station will be reflecting plenty of sunlight, and should be bright enough to spot, even if you have to catch it between the clouds, or through thin clouds, or amid urban light pollution.
Watch for a bright, star-like object rising above the southwestern horizon at 9:30 p.m. If it's blinking, or sports colored or multiple lights it's an airplane. Keep looking. Skipping along at 17,500 mph, the ISS will climb past the closely-paired planet Saturn and bright star Regulus, in the constellation Leo. It will rise 75 degrees above the northwestern horizon at its highest by 9:32 p.m.. That's almost directly overhead as seen from Baltimore.
From there the station and its crew will pass directly "through" the stars of the Big Dipper, and head off toward the Northeast, disappearing at 9:35 p.m.
Saturday's flyby will follow a very closely parallel orbit, tracking north and east up the East Coast of the United States.
The forecast is better than Thursday's. Watch for it rising again above the southwestern horizon - this time at 8:39 p.m. It will pass midway between Saturn and Mars and zip once again through the stars of the Big Dipper at about 8:43 p.m. Then it will fly off toward the northeast, disappearing at 8:45 p.m.
You can get your own ISS predictions - and more - from Heavens-Above.com They're customized for your location. The Heavens Above sky map here shows the ISS's Thursday path across the sky as seen from Baltimore.
Remember to stop back here after the show and share the experience with those who just don't GET it.
Shuttle astronauts are preparing for another visit to the station, with launch of the shuttle Discovery set for May 31 - next Saturday.
Comments
This just in from Eddie:
WHAT A SIGHT! I just came in from watching the ISS fly directly overhead....a great night for viewing...thanks for the heads up...a few questions for the master: which one is Saturn and which one is Regulus....keep it simple, is Saturn the top or bottom 'star'....how big is Regulus? also, there is another pairing of stars a little further to the north....two big ones sitting side by side, not up and down...what is that?
Eddie A
Posted by: frank roylance | May 22, 2008 9:53 PM
For Eddie: The one on top was Saturn. The one below and to the right a bit is Regulus, about 77 light years away in the constellation Leo. That means the light you saw tonight left Regulus in 1931. Regulus is quite a bit larger than our sun, with a radius more than 4 times the sun's. And it is as bright as 221 suns put together.
The side-by-side pair to the north are (left to right) Pollux and Castor, the bright stars in Gemini, the Twins - 33 and 51 light years away, respectively. The solitary "star" between the two pairs is Mars (about 167 million miles away now). NASA's Phoenix spacecraft will be landing there (they hope) on Sunday evening.
Posted by: frank roylance | May 22, 2008 10:01 PM
And this, from Emily in Westminster:
One of the beauties of living out here in the boonies is a night like tonight -- crisp and clear, and we have enough land to find exactly the right place to watch that space station go over. One thing I noticed was that when the satellite is low on the horizon it appears to move more slowly than when it is overhead, or near-to. This means that when you are looking at a 5-minute viewing slot, you may miss the first 2 minutes because you don't see the motion. And we don't have real horizons either -- between the lay of the land and the trees, some is blocked on both ends of the pass. So, we are lucky to get 4 minutes of a 5-minute transit.
When I look at this sort of thing I marvel at the ability of our ancestors to figure out astronomical stuff, back in the days when they had no instruments of any consequence. What would they have made of this "star" zooming overhead from time to time?
........................mle
Posted by: frank roylance | May 23, 2008 12:58 PM