Space Station and Shuttle Visible Together in Night Sky

Dark Knight

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With the Space Shuttle Atlantis scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, skywatchers across much of the United States and southern Canada are in for a real treat on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

Should weather conditions permit to offer clear skies, there will be a few opportunities to see both the Atlantis orbiter and the ISS flying across the sky from many locations.

The sight should easily be visible to anyone, even from brightly-lit cities.

The appearance of either the Space Shuttle or the Space Station moving across the sky is not in itself unusual. On any clear evening within a couple of hours of local sunset and with no optical aid, you can usually spot several orbiting Earth satellites creeping across the sky like moving stars. Satellites become visible only when they are in sunlight and the observer is in deep twilight or darkness. This usually means shortly after dusk or before dawn.

What makes the prospective upcoming passages so interesting is that you'll be able to see the two largest orbiting space vehicles in the sky at the same time.

Shuttle Atlantis is expected to undock from the ISS at 10:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday. Atlantis will fly around the ISS before finally pulling away from the Station at 12:28 EDT, although it should still remain at a relatively close distance to it until its scheduled return to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, June 21.


Much More at Link:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070618/sc_space/spacestationandshuttlevisibletogetherinnightsky
 
Thankk you for posting this information. I can't wait till tonight.
 
Yes, thanks for posting this info!

We watched the space station go over one other time...and you really have to watch closely, because it scoots across the sky rather quickly.
 
This is cool but I have no idea what the numbers mean or what part of the sky I am supposed to look in. I am near Mesa Arizona...help??
 
This is cool but I have no idea what the numbers mean or what part of the sky I am supposed to look in. I am near Mesa Arizona...help??


For you, Nocgirl, start scanning the Northern horizon a little before 9:05pm tonight... around 10 degrees above the N horizon you should see a pinprick of light at or precisely around 9:05, if it is dark enough... it will be a small pinpoint of light moving in the sky... it will climb no more then 2 degrees higher as it scoots towards the north east, all within 2 minutes. As a matter of fact, tonight, you will see 2 little dots of light doing it at that time, the leading dot being the space shuttle.


I've "chased" ISS on various occasions with other astronomers... when it transits right overhead, it can be visible as much as 5 minutes... when that happens, the light looks like it wobbles. That is because ISS is in constant rotation. If you do long exposure photography of a transit, an upclose look at the image shows a zigzag pattern... thanks to the rotation:

ISS2004.jpg


Every now and then, some of us chasers get lucky with our telescopes and modified cameras, and we actually image ISS not as a point of light, but as it is. I've gotten lucky once... though my 3 frames of the space station are not exactly clear, you CAN tell that it is the space station:
ISSfinal2.jpg


Spaceweather has some images up today of the space station with the shuttle coupled to it, that another astronomer caught with their telescope and modified camera. I wish I was as good at the person that pulled off this:



http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2007/19jun07/Tom-Gwilym-sts-117-ISS_1182268257.jpg
 
I just saw them both! WAY cool! I can't believe how bright they were! :woohoo:
 
We saw them!!! Awesome!:woohoo: Atlantis was definitely brighter that the ISS and they were larger than we thought they would be. They appeared at the time NASA said and we saw them for at least three minutes. It was a perfect night to watch, clear as can be. Tomorrow night is supposed to be good as well. My son is so excited, I don't think he'll be asleep anytime soon. :woohoo:

Elphaba, loved the picture links. Thanks.
 
I just saw them! Wow!!!! I only saw them for about 30 seconds because I was looking in the wrong direction (yes, I feel silly) but what a a sight! It made my whole night! I can't wait til tomorrow to show the kids!

V.
 
I totally forgot to look. I went out there late at 9:15pm.

When will I have another chance, anyone know?
 
Ok so it looks like 9:25pm AZ time is another chance? Looks like I need to look at the North Horizon? What do I look for, do I need binoculars?
 
Ok so it looks like 9:25pm AZ time is another chance? Looks like I need to look at the North Horizon? What do I look for, do I need binoculars?

Nope, naked eye is fine. You will see what looks like 2 bright stars moving fast across the sky.

Tonight I saw them AND a shooting star next to them! Way cool! (I praised the Lord, naturally! :p )
 
I looked last night..saw the moon and the "evening star"(?Venus) above the SW horizan at 9:20 PM...
We saw another small dot in the SE sky at the same time...what was that?...Mercury?..nothing else...

I copied the time and location in my area for tonight for the ISS...we'll give it another try..hopes it clear skies....

susiebond
 
Ok, last night I tried looking and could not see anything but planes. I am not sure if I saw it and didn't realize it or what. There is so much light pollution though because I have a bright street light right in front of my house, I drove around the block where it was clearer and still don't think I saw it.

Now I just spoke to my Dad, when Dark Knight mentioned the 2 bright lights moving, My Dad sys he saw it but thought it was 2 planes.

So tonight if the SS is not with the ISS, how do I know it is not a plane? It moves faster or what? Grrr...this is frustrating! LOL. I'll look at the time when you can see the ISS and the SS.

How far up in the sky will it be? I dont understand what the approach and departure is....What does this mean? sorry for sounding dumb, this is probably why I got C's in Math and Science in high school lol

[SIZE=-1]SHUTTLE[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Thu Jun 21/08:12 PM[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]11[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]10 above NNE[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]10 above NE[/SIZE]
 
I tried to post last night but the WS server must have been down.:confused: We saw them again, two rather fast lights starting out rather faint and small but they got brighter and larger as they went overhead. They don't blink and the ISS follows Atlantis. We had a three-minute window at 11:52. It was a beautiful starry night (as was Tuesday) and we live in the country so it's rather dark.

Since Atlantis gets another day on orbit you might get another chance tonight. I looked at the link for Mesa, Nocogirl, and there are two possibilities for tonight but that seems odd, although it only takes 90 minutes to orbit Earth. One is at 8:11 p.m. for 2 minutes and another at 9:46 for less than a minute.
ISS Thu Jun 21/08:11 PM 2 11 10 above NNE 10 above NE
ISS Thu Jun 21/09:46 PM < 1 32 20 above WNW 32 above WNW
So it looks like the first chance you look just above the horizon (10 degrees. I believe directly overhead would be 90 degrees) in the north-northeast and it will travel to the northeast. The second opportunity (9:46, probably will be darker then) 20 degrees above west-northwest, moving a bit more overhead to depart west-northwest, which doesn't make sense. Maybe the less than a minute appearance has something to do with the same direction for approach and depart.

Good luck, it's been the highlight of the summer so far for us. My son went around the neighborhood telling everyone we'd seen them Tuesday so there were many more people out last night. They were easy to see, at least here.
 
Wow!
I just heard the space shuttle break the sound barrier a few minutes ago. They must be down on the ground or almost there right about now.

Gosh I wish I'd heard they were landing here ealier. I might have tried to get there in time to see it land!

fran
 
^^Me too!! Holy cow. Scared me for a second, then I realized what it was.
 
Man that was a jolt, I wasn't expecting it for another minute or so, caught me off guard :D

B U T FUL entry, and landing:clap:
 

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