Slideshow of ISS passing by the Rose Bowl – Aug 5th 2013

Posted on August 6, 2013 by liam

I decided to head to the Rose Bowl to capture some photo’s of this very bright and very long overflight of the ISS. The ISS reached a brightness of Magnitude -3.

: The ISS begins is pass low in the SW at 8:19pm. This shows five images stacked – each is 5 seconds exposure. The very first shot of the ISS here is pretty difficult to see. look for it about level with the highest part of the tree in the foreground and a little bit to the right of that.

: I pan the camera to catch it at it’s brightest overhead.

: This is about 2 minutes in to the overflight

: Now it is heading towards the east

: These four stacked images show the ISS as it heads further east. It eventually sets very near to Mt Wilson

If you prefer – here is a full-screen slideshow

Space Station – Very bright over-flights over the next few days in SoCal.

Posted on August 5, 2013 by liam

The International Space Station will be a special treat for all of us in Southern California over the next several days. We will have some truly spectacular “fly-overs” for some of the brightest passes theoretically 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 Aug 5th starting at approx 8:20pm will be one of the brighter ones.

Be sure to wave to the SIX astronauts/cosmonauts who are calling the ISS home right now. (note: there are currently nine people in space right now – three are on the Chinese space station)

Click on the date for each pass for further detail.

Date	Start	Highest point			End
Date	[Mag]	Time	Alt.	Az.	Time	Alt.	Az.	Time	Alt.	Az.
05 Aug	-3.0	20:19:23	10°	SSW	20:22:36	47°	SE	20:25:50	10°	ENE	Visible
05 Aug	-0.2	21:57:12	10°	WNW	21:59:30	17°	NNW	22:01:49	10°	NNE	Visible
06 Aug	-1.0	21:07:54	10°	W	21:10:48	27°	NW	21:13:43	10°	NNE	Visible
07 Aug	-2.1	20:18:56	10°	WSW	20:22:10	47°	NW	20:25:26	10°	NE	Visible

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.

Earth Selfie Time!

Posted on July 19, 2013 by liam

The folks over at JPL have commanded the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn to turn it’s cameras back towards the Earth today. From between 2:27 and 2:42pm PDT Cassini will be positioned behind Saturn… and the Earth will be positioned perfectly below the rings. Although the Earth will only be several pixels across it will still represent one of the iconic photos capturing our home in the cosmos.

Here is a video tour showing both the Saturn system – along with Cassini. At around the 59 second mark this shows approximately what Cassini will see when it takes our photo.

note: Original video provided by Southern Stars (makes of Sky Safari apps for iOS, Android and OSx). The video was slightly edited by LookUpTonight to include some additional text information during the video.