The International Space Station will be making a great visible overflight of Southern California tonight and for a few more nights this week. Tonight will be a spectacular “fly-over” as it will be almost as bright is is possible (the brightness is determined by how the space station – and particularly their football-pitch sized solar panels – happen to be aligned with the sun).
For those of you who may be new to viewing it the ISS will be visible as one of the brightest (mostly the brightest) star-like object in the sky as it passes approx 200 miles overhead at over 17000 mph. The table below gives a lot of information about each visible pass including when and where to look. The lower the Mag number the brighter the ISS will be. So for example the pass on October 29 starting at approx 6:22pm will be very bright. It will start low in the NW at 6:22pm then rise higher as it crosses the sky towards the NE and then drop lower and set in the SE.
Be sure to wave to the SIX astronauts/cosmonauts who are calling the ISS home right now.
Click on the date for each pass for further detail.
Date | Start | Highest point | End | |||||||
[Mag] | Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | |
29 Oct | -3.0 | 18:22:38 | 10° | NW | 18:25:52 | 47° | NE | 18:29:06 | 10° | ESE |
29 Oct | -0.2 | 20:00:49 | 10° | W | 20:02:18 | 13° | SW | 20:03:47 | 10° | SSW |
30 Oct | -0.8 | 19:11:40 | 10° | WNW | 19:14:23 | 23° | SW | 19:17:06 | 10° | S |
31 Oct | -2.0 | 18:23:11 | 10° | WNW | 18:26:23 | 45° | SW | 18:29:35 | 10° | SSE |
02 Nov | 0.1 | 18:24:53 | 10° | W | 18:26:34 | 13° | SW | 18:28:14 | 10° | SSW |
All of the predictions above provided by Heavens-Above.com where you can get your own predictions for this and many other neat things to see in the sky above you.