Wednesday 23 January 2013

Spotted the Station!

I've been subscribing to NASA's "Spot the Station" mailing list ever since I was gazing out of the window and thought I may well have seen it go over.  I did look it up at shortly after on the excellent ISS Tracker site and was moderately convinced it was indeed the ISS, however it travels so fast relative to the Earth that unless you know the precise time you saw it, you may as well not bother.  Even being out by as little as a few minutes can mean it was actually somewhere over Africa instead and what you saw was a plane (or some kind of UFO*.)  So I decided to take a more proactive approach and actively look for it going over.  Annoyingly though after months of getting emails from NASA telling me it would be going over at stupid o'clock in the morning or suffering the usual British astronomy curse of thick clouds when it was traversing at a more civilised hour, I still hadn't managed to catch even a glimpse of it.  Last week though everything fell into place when I got this:


SpotTheStation! Time: Thu Jan 17 7:26 AM, Visible: 3 min, Max Height: 70 degrees, Appears: W, Disappears: WNWSpotTheStation! Time: Thu Jan 17 7:26 AM, Visible: 3 min, Max Height: 70 degrees, Appears: W, Disappears: WNW

I was actually awake (because after getting up for astronomical events on spec many times and seeing a dark sky I've given up on just hoping the sky will be clear and setting an alarm) and although there was some cloud, it was patchy enough that I could see at least some of the sky some of the time.  It was quite impressive too, a bright star racing across the sky.  

I've not had an amazing success rate, but I am hoping to see it a few more times in the coming year.

* In the literal sense that it is Unidentified, not an alien space craft.

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