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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Redrobes" data-source="post: 5673719" data-attributes="member: 40793">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.</blockquote>

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