space station & satellite
 

if any of you are in the upper midwest, the space station atlantis & something else trailing it will be very visible flying from nw to se sometime between 11pm and 11:20 pm.

i know it's short notice.....but if you're home, step outside. it went by at 9:40 tonight and was really cool!!

supposed to go around tomorrow night as well before landing on thursday.


www.space.com has an article on it with links on where & when to see it in your part of the sky.

edit.....here's a more complete link.....

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/0706...uttle_iss.html

The "something else" is the International Space Station.

For anyone who is interested, and you know your coordinates, you can use this website to find out when various spacecraft and satellites will be trekking across the sky....

http://www.heavens-above.com

Particularly interesting is the Iridium flares. You'll need an accurate time on your watch, but it's worth it to see these things just flare up and light up the night. Some are absolutely brilliant!

I watched this last night. They cut an arc between Venus and the moon. I thought about dragging out the telescope, but I got too lazy. Besides, they were moving to fast to keep them in view for very long anyway. Still, it was a cool way to spend a few minutes on a warm Summer's evening.

cool, I'll have to check it out!

I went out and saw them, was pretty cool

tried looking at them thru some binoculars but just got slightly larger shining light spots, needed something more powerful to get any kind of detail increase.

was cool to see, thanks for the heads up about it