Did I see the International Space Station?

[Bullgrit]

Last night, about 9:00, my wife and I were sitting on our front porch. Across the street, our neighbor came out and stood in the middle of the street, with a phone in her hand, looking up at the sky. We couldn't hear anything she was saying until she pointed up and said, "Oh that's cool!"

I got up and walked out into the street, curious what she was looking at. As I walked up near her, she pointed out what she said was the International Space Station moving overhead.

The sky was without stars. It was dark, so I have to assume the no-stars was because of clouds. And we were looking up right next to a street light, so we had "light pollution" right in our faces. But there was a single bright light, (looked like an airliner, but wasn't blinking), way far up.

We're in the eastern U.S. The light was moving from about northwest to southeast. And it was moving pretty darn fast. Faster than an airplane would be at any cruising altitude. I saw it for only a few seconds before it disappeared, (probably behind the clouds we couldn't see).

Was that the ISS? If so, that was so awesome cool! I never knew you could actually see it with the naked eye. Does it pass over at that time every night? I so want to see it again, and I want my sons to see it. (And my wife, who came out to the street a few seconds too late.)

Bullgrit

 

[RangerWickett]

Well, I guess it depends on how big of a slice of the sky you had access to. According to this tracker - Human Space Flight (HSF) - Sightings - the ISS was over visible Atlanta for about 4 minutes last night around 9pm.

A year ago or so, I went out and spotted when the ISS and shuttle were just pulling away from being docked with each other, and yeah, you could see two bright spots up in the sky. If you knew what angle they were coming from and had a telescope, you could probably actually make out a fair bit of detail from the ground.

If it was moving so fast to cross the whole sky in a few seconds, then it probably wasn't the ISS. Maybe just a low-flying plane?

But check out the sighting opportunities yourself. Drop menu is on the left side of the page: Human Space Flight (HSF) - Realtime Data

 

[Bullgrit]

If it was moving so fast to cross the whole sky in a few seconds, then it probably wasn't the ISS. Maybe just a low-flying plane?

No, it didn't cross the whole sky in a few seconds. That was just how long I saw it between walking out and looking up and it passing behind clouds.

Thanks for the links. Looking at the data confirms it for me. Comparing what I saw, (few seconds, across a small slice of sky), with what the data says, I think it's a match. And looking around for my city on that site shows that tonight will be a good night to let my family see it.

Bullgrit

 

[Redrobes]

The ISS is very easy to see with the naked eye. Its about as bright as venus and moves with a uniform speed in a straight line across the sky. It moves quite fast such that from horizon to horizon its about 5 mins but you usually see it from several 10's of degrees above so its about 3 mins. The time of seeing is important. It needs to be long after dusk but not too late. The sun needs to be lit up there but not down where you are. This makes seeing in the summer easier than winter.

It goes around the earth every 1.5 hrs but it passes across the landscape with a different ground track each time. So you usually get runs of several sightings over a few weeks then its off for a while - several weeks or so. You need to be within its path which goes up to about 60deg north/south but otherwise everyone else gets a shot at seeing it. For us in the UK, as were about 50+ degrees N, then its always traveling W to E across the sky tho for people on the equator it would be more S to N.

When the shuttle used to be just about to attach or just detached then you could see one big dot and one less bright dot going across the sky.

In the old days you used to be able to see Mir station as well. Seeing general satellites is pretty easy too once you know what to look for. Some of them are very bright, others looks like quite dim stars but all have that fast uniform way of going through the sky.

Seeing the ISS is easy. Taking a photo of it as a white streak or blur is easy too. Taking a photo of it such that it shows any kind of features is well hard tho. I have never managed to get anything on camera better than a blurry white spot jiggling about with the camera vibration. To do it right you need to program in a telescope tracker - of which I don't have. Kudos to anyone who has got a good snap of it.

 

[Bullgrit]

Kudos to anyone who has got a good snap of it.

I took a picture of it with my cellphone.

We (whole family) got out at 8:00 the next night and saw it fly over. Very cool, if very short, experience.
International Space Station Sighting Total Bullgrit

It was much brighter, bigger, and more obvious to the naked eye looking up in the sky than what it looks like in the photo.

Bullgrit