I found this real interesting and thought I would share it.This month is going to be the best time to view the space station as it passes overhead.If you want to see it,or get more info,Space.com is the place to get info.They even have a tracking program where you can type in your zip code and they will download all the info you need as to what time to watch for it,what days,and which direction it will come from and head towards.On certain days,they say you will be able to even make out the solar panels with just the naked eye.Way cool.

 

Thanks..
It was on the news the other night that there is also a comet visable , just after dark, in the S/W sky South of the planet Venus.

 

thanks for the info kt, i'll show my son that web site. maybe well break out the telescope.....

 

Oh man, a few years back we were out camping. late, really late one night me and a pal were watching the stars drinking beer. we were talking and watching one satellite drift across the sky straight above us. as it was passing pretty much directly overhead it was like when an oncoming car flashes its highbeams, just for a second it lit up the whole sky. we both went silent and looked at eachother and made sure we both saw the same thing.

anyways after geting back from that trip we checked it out on the internet and found we were under the iss orbit. i figure it must of been the sun reflecting off the solar panels. craziness.

 

That's cool. Maybe 10 years ago, my brother and I were fishing at around 1am, when we saw both space shuttles cruising along near each other. They were only about 5 miles apart. Something you don't see every day.

 

If you lay on a lounge chair out in your yard you can use a pair of binoculars and see it very well.

 

Try this site too. It will give you directions for just about any object you can see in space.
http://www.heavens-above.com/

 

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I was going through the Space.com site last night about viewing the ISS and they said that we may be lucky enough to see the station jettison it's waste water. It immediately turns into a cloud of ice crystals . That's what you may of seen reflecting the sunlight. I guess you can consider yourself lucky. I saw one that was repeadedly "on and off." It was a Russian spent rocket tumbling end over end.

 

Satellite Spotting: See Dramatic Iridium Flares Now
By Joe Rao
SPACE.com's Night Sky Columnist
posted: 07:00 am ET
21 May 2004



A while back I received an inquiry from Craig Allen, a broadcast meteorologist in New York:

"I just thought you’d be interested in a rather unusual sky observation that I made recently from Nassau County (Long Island). I was walking my dog around 10 o’clock at night and was looking up, when I saw an ordinary-looking star that became incredibly bright.

"I do remember thinking I was witnessing the death of a star . . . some kind of supernova so far away that it was only a small burst of light. In fact, for a few moments, I thought it might even have been brighter than Venus; the brightness went up, then ramped down . . . eventually getting so dim that I couldn’t see it anymore.

"The whole thing from fade-up to fade-down probably lasted no more than 15 or 20 seconds. Any idea what I saw?"

What Allen fortuitously saw was an "Iridium flare," caused by one in a new fleet of satellites that have been put into Earth orbit over the past several years; satellites that can briefly appear to flare to incredible brilliance.

And you can spot them, too, especially if you take the time to find out when they're likely to occur.

Space mirrors

An Iridium communication satellite's Main Mission Antenna is a silver-coated Teflon antenna array that mimics near-perfect mirrors and are angled at 40-degrees away from the axis of the body of the satellites. This can provide a specular (direct) reflection of the Sun’s disk, periodically causing a dazzling glint of reflected sunlight from their 492 mile-high orbits.

At the Earth's surface, the specular reflection is probably less than 50-miles wide so each flare can only be viewed from a fairly small area.

Iridium satellites normally traverse the sky on the edge of visibility, at +6 magnitude. On this astronomer's scale, smaller numbers represent brighter objects. Venus outshines all stars and planets at magnitude -4.

Iridium satellites can provide reflective flares of magnitude -9. That's up to 100 times brighter than Venus, based on how the brightness scale works. The flares can last anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds before the satellite once again becomes almost invisible to the naked eye.

In fact, it is even possible to see such flares during the daytime, if you know exactly where to look.

Where to look

If you wish to see such brief flares for yourself, you will first have to know your exact latitude, longitude and local time zone. Then, log on to a web page that will tell you when the next Iridium flares can be seen. One such site is Heavens Above, hosted by the German Aerospace Center (also known as DLR).


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Night Sky Friday is brought to you by Starry Night software.

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This site and others also provide viewing information for the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope and other satellite.

A bit of caution: Not all Iridiums flare according to the predicted schedules. Some of the Iridium satellites are either tumbling or otherwise not operational so their future movements cannot be reliably predicted. A fully operational satellite should be orbiting the Earth at 14.34 revolutions per day.

You may wonder why are the satellites called "Iridium?" It has absolutely nothing to do with the metallic element that occurs in platinum ores. Originally, it was conceived that a total of 77 Iridium communication satellites would be placed into Earth orbit. Since the atomic number for Iridium is 77, a satellite constellation's name was conceived.

In reality, a total of 88 satellites were launched between May 5, 1997 and June 11, 1999. Five additional more were launched on February 11, 2002. Typically, the expected lifetime of a satellite is 5 to 8 years.

I thought I would share this with you all,these flares are really cool to see!K.T.

 

Please do not post articles without permission from the authors. Link to them instead. There are copyright considerations...

 

Sorry webmaster I did not know that,on other space.com articles it says that the article can be copied as long as they are given proper credit.That was why I made sure to put the heading with the article.But I wont post them anymore,I dont want to cause any trouble.Now to learn how to post a link.

 

Not if you live in Seattle. Here, if you lay on a lounge chair and look up with binoculars, all you see is big boulders coming at you instead of raindrops.

 

About 6 yrs ago in huntsville texas, i saw one of the shuttles launch from florida. It was just about dark and we could see the flames shooting out the back of it.