Remember, you can do this from your own neighborhood, just find a spot to view from where you have the most open sky to see. Since , Derrick has been teaching us to look up—and to wonder about what we see up there. Join Our Email List. Learn more about our commitment to safety. The Franklin Institute is a C 3 nonprofit registered in the U.
The Franklin Institute. The Current. Updated April 27, Looking for something unique to do with your spare time? Timing is specific to the Philadelphia region.
Want to learn more? Tagged: Space. Derrick Pitts, Hon. These are the satellites that are large enough over 20 feet or 6 meters in length and low enough to miles, or to km above Earth to be most readily seen.
The length of the station's solar arrays measures feet 73 meters in width, which rivals the wingspan of a Boeing The station itself is It weighs , lbs. Circling the Earth at an average altitude of miles km and at a speed of 17, mph 28, kph , it can appear to move as fast as a high-flying jet airliner, sometimes taking as much as six or seven minutes to cross the sky. It can easily be confused with aircraft lights. Nominally, it appears white with a slight yellow tinge and nominally its visual magnitude can reach a brilliant magnitude —1.
At its very brightest it can sometimes appear to shine as bright as magnitude While the ISS looks like a very bright moving star to the unaided eye, those who have been able to train a telescope on it have actually been able to detect its T-shape as it whizzed across their field of view.
Some have actually been able to track the ISS with their scope by moving it along the projected path. Those who have gotten a good glimpse describe the body of the space station as a brilliant white, while the solar panels appear a coppery red. From now through the first week of June, North Americans will get many opportunities to see the ISS flying over their homes, due chiefly to a seasonal circumstance.
As we approach the summer solstice on June 20, nighttime hours are growing short and the time that a satellite in a low-Earth-orbit like the ISS can remain illuminated by the sun can extend throughout the night, a situation that can never be attained during other times of the year.
For most locations there are two types of passes that are visible. In one case, the ISS initially appears over toward the southwestern part of the sky and then sweeps over toward the northeast. But on other occasions it becomes possible to see a second type of pass, with the ISS initially appearing over toward the northwestern part of the sky and sweeping over toward the southeast.
In the most extreme cases, you might be able to catch the ISS as many as six times during a single day! A somewhat higher pass, taking a north-northwest to east-northeast trajectory and lasting for nearly 5 minutes will commence at a. At a. Along the way, the ISS will climb more than two-thirds of the way up from the northeast horizon to the point directly overhead. At p. And at p.
We'll provide you all the details on how to generate sighting information for your hometown in just a moment, but first It is the core module of China's new space spation Tianhe , which means "Heavenly Harmony. Editor's Note: This article has been corrected to clarify that the International Space Station appears as a bright light moving across the sky, not a streak; images that feature streaks are usually long exposures that show the station moving over time.
Original article on Space. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. Samantha Mathewson.
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