That probably sounds very confusing, so how are you supposed to know when to look? Well, there are several websites on the internet that will tell you exactly when and where to look for the ISS after you’ve entered your location. 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, and visible for several minutes. During a “high” pass the ISS can appear stunningly bright, so bright it can cast shadows from a dark site, but during a “low” pass it looks barely brighter than the bright stars in the sky beyond it. Sometimes it flies almost overhead, but on other “passes” it only climbs slightly above our horizon. It’s also very important to know that not every “pass” of the ISS is spectacular. And it’s not exclusive to the NIGHT sky, either 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. There are ISS spotting “periods”, blocks of a week or so when it is clearly visible in the sky. Firstly, the ISS isn’t visible EVERY night. Well, yes, it is, but there are some extra things you need to know. Just watch the ISS drift across the sky, and enjoy it! Eventually you’ll see a “star” rising up from behind that western horizon, ormoving just above it. Face the WEST (ish… sometimes the ISS rises in the SW, but face roughly west and you won’t go far wrong)… and wait. Go outside at least 5 minutes BEFORE that time to let your eyes get used to the darkness.ģ. Find out what time the ISS will rise above your local horizon (see below).Ģ. Ok, so having read all that I’m sure you want to see the ISS for yourself! What exactly do you do? To see the ISS you need to do the following:ġ. 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…) ( Colours? Yes those highly reflective solar panels are made of a shiny gold material, and they give the ISS a golden hue as it crosses the sky. If you have a pair of binoculars though, you should definitely try training them on the ISS – they will make it look much bigger and brighter, and enhance its colours too. NONE! The best thing about ISS-spotting is that you don’t need a telescope – in fact a telescope is pretty useless for ISS-spotting because the ISS moves so quickly it’s very hard to keep it in a telescope’s high magnification eyepiece. All you need to know is what time to start looking for it. In recent years, the ISS has grown larger and brighter, and is now frequently so bright that you don’t need to be an astronomer – with a deep knowledge of the night sky and expensive equipment – to enjoy following it as it flies through the sky. That’s what makes it (and other satellites) visible to us in our night sky. That sunlight reflects off its enormous solar panel “wings”, just like sunlight glints off an airplane, or a mirror. Well, because it’s so high the ISS is still bathed in sunlight long after darkness has fallen down here on the ground. But how come we can see something so far away, so high above the Earth? If they go outside they put on a spacesuit. ![]() As they’re pressurised, like the inside of an airliner, the astronauts don’t need to wear spacesuits, they just wear normal clothing. These are the rooms and laboratories the astronauts live and work in. Between the solar array “wings” are lots of tubes or cylinders, all joined together, called “modules”. The most obvious parts are the huge “wings” on either side are its solar arrays – these power the space station by collecting energy from the Sun. The ISS is made of many different parts, and has bits sticking out of it everywhere. That’s because a) we can’t afford to build one of those, and b) in real life, spacecraft don’t need to be pretty, they just have to work. ![]() If you look at photos of the ISS you’ll see it looks nothing like the graceful, wheel-shaped space stations seen in science fiction films like “2001 A Space Odyssey”. Its pieces were all joined together in space, making it Mankind’s most ambitious, complicated and risky construction project ever. To look at it, you’d think it was a huge Meccano model, and in a way it is – a multi-billion dollar model built over many years, by different countries. The ISS is a high tech laboratory, orbiting the Earth at around 17,000 mph at almost 300 miles up in space, where astronauts live, work and do experiments. If you’re one of the many people who want to start doing this, but don’t know how or when to see the space station in the sky, this simple SPA Guide is for you. For many, it’s become as enjoyable a part of the hobby as watching a meteor shower or just standing outside under the stars on a clear night. Amateur astronomers have been enjoying watching the International Space Station drifting across the sky for years now.
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