Whats that in the Sky? Is it a Plane? No, its the ISS and NASA

The BBC has an article on the ESA ATV that will be docking with the space station. A the base of the page is a “widget” of that shows where the ATV and ISS is in relation to the planet underneath.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7321116.stm

Well the high-level fog made that a flop.

Next good view will be 1 April 5:16am starting in the north-west sky.
Magnitude -2.3, which brighter than the brightest star (-1.44) but not as bright as Venus at its brightest (-4.4).

But tomorrow morning at 6:07:35, the Iridium satellite will rise in the NNE heading to E, and should flare to -8, not far off the full moon at -12.7. But hang on – that’s a logarithmic scale, making it just 100th the brightness of the full moon – but still pretty spectacular.

I’ll second GA with Heavens Above – I caught them last week while docked – amazing to see but be aware the Shuttle is now undocked and due to land Thursday morning

Hey Che, how do you interpret the angles and stuff? For example for this saturday it gives:

SATELLITE LOCAL DURATION MAX ELEV APPROACH DEPARTURE DATE/TIME (MIN)(DEG)(DEG-DIR)(DEG-DIR)

ISS Sat Mar 29/06:45 AM 2 20 11 above N 20 above NE

Does this mean you look for it in the North? Don’t understand the max elevation of 20 deg bit, does this mean it dosn’t go above 20 deg in elevation? help

I use http://heavens-above.com Log in and add your location and you get local times.

These passes will be very bright with the shuttle attached to the ISS.