International Space Station Sighting

Around 9:00 last night, after the boys were in bed, Cowgrit and I were sitting on our front porch enjoying the pleasant evening. Across the street, our neighbor came out of her house and stood out in her driveway.

After a few seconds, we could see she had a telephone to her ear. When we and everything were quiet, we could hear her talking as just a bare mumbling. (Couldn’t hear words.) We just figured she wanted to enjoy the outdoor temperature while talking on the phone. But after a minute, she pointed up to the sky and said, “Oh cool!”

She continued looking up into the sky, and she said, “Cool!” again. Okay, that made me curious. I got up from my porch chair, and walked down our driveway and into the street. I turned and looked up into the sky where she was pointing, but all I got was a street light right in my face. Our neighbor explained that her parents had called her and directed her where to look to see the International Space Station pass overhead.

There were no stars visible in the sky, what with overcast clouds and the light pollution from the street light, but after a few seconds I spotted a lone bright point of light. It looked like an airplane very high in the sky, but it wasn’t blinking. If it wasn’t moving, I would have described it as a particularly bright star. But it was moving, and pretty fast. It was moving faster than an airplane at any cruising altitude. It was moving about northwest to southeast fast enough to probably cross the sky in just a couple or so minutes. (The ISS orbits around 200 miles up, moving at about 17,000 mph.)

A few seconds after I saw it, and before Cowgrit could get out into the street and look, it disappeared behind clouds. We and the neighbor talked for a few minutes, and then we all went on back in our houses.

I wasn’t 100% sure what we saw was the ISS. I mean, I had never heard of being able to see it with the naked eye. But, it wasn’t stationary like a star, and it was moving faster than I’ve ever seen a plane move. This morning, I checked online and asked a question of some folks on a message board I frequent. That conversation gave me a link:

Satellite Sighting Opportunities

Satellite Sighting Information – Raleigh

Satellite Sighting Information – Atlanta

You can, indeed, see the ISS without a telescope. This information says that tonight will be a good time to see it before the boys need to go to bed. We told them about it, and tonight we’ll be going down the street to their elementary school playground, (an open area away from street lights), to see if we can spot it passing overhead. Especially neat is that Cowgrit10 is studying angles and degrees in math, so this gets to be a lesson in how to apply that knowledge to something really cool. We’ll be looking about 16 degrees above northwest at 8:00 tonight to first spot the ISS’s track over our area.

If you’re interested, use the links above to find a good day and time to get your own sighting of the ISS passing overhead. It’s not a fireworks show, but it’s still pretty cool.

Edit: We saw the ISS pass overhead at 8:00 pm tonight. The sun had just gone down below the horizon, but the sky was still a twilight blue. The ISS was the only bright light in the sky, (other than the moon), and it moved swiftly from horizon to horizon. It was a very cool sight.

Click the photo to see the larger version. The ISS is that white dot near the center of the image. It looked a lot bigger and brighter in person.

Bullgrit