Sky-watching website

Posted by Bret B on January 31, 2013, 12:45 pm, in reply to "Re: Space station sighting tomorrow morning"
187.146.107.105

Hi Daniel, are you using the NASA email service to receive notices of ISS passes? I was signed up at one time, but I haven't been getting any notices for some reason. But I think these notices will be off by at least a few minutes and several degrees, since the closest location available to choose from was Puerto Vallarta (150km NNW of us.) If you don't mind having to manually check a site every few days, here is the one I use: http://www.heavens-above.com/?Lat=19.281&Lng=-104.788&Alt=4&Loc=La+Manzanilla%2C+MX&TZ=Mex . (This link already includes the lat & long & timezone that I use for my viewing location here in La Manz: you can change this if you need.) This site tells you where and when to look for thousands of manmade satellites and rocket fragments, and also all the natural bodies in the Solar System. There is even a listing of Iridium satellite "flares", which are very bright sun glints off the main mission antennas. You need a very accurate watch to spot these since they only last a few seconds, and you need accurate latitude and longitude of your viewing location since the "flares" only cover a few km - wide path along the ground. Anyway, here is a list of the ISS flyovers for us during the next 10 days. There are some good ones, in the pre-dawn as well as after sunset. In the Brightness [Mag.] column, the more negative the magnitude, the brighter. Looks like the brightest evening pass will be on Feb 5, when it will pass directly overhead (89 degrees of altitude,) and be above the horizon for around 7 minutes. And for a bonus, the ISS will appear to pass near Jupiter which also will be high overhead at that time (shining at Mag -2.3, a little dimmer than the ISS). The ISS will be 470km above us, while Jupiter is 680 MILLION km farther out. Enjoy!

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