At the moment there are six men, who are working and living in an artificial environment 370 km above the earth, travelling at nearly 8 km per second (28,000 km per hour) and tonight as it does every few weeks it will pass over our heads. This is the International Space Station.
At 8:10 pm for about 6 minutes it will be visible, over Brisbane, Queensland as small bright dot crossing over the sky. It will appear from the NW and will disappear to the SE, it will reach a maximum height of 76'. I have been monitoring the ISS for a few months now, and this is the highest and hence longest duration overpass I have seen,
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| Image courtesy of NASA.gov |
I will be in Graceville park (with dogs) which is a good location to see it from as it is a large space so the horizon is very low. If anyone wants to come along feel free to come over and say hello.
Here is a link to the NASA site about how to see the Space Station, and you can sign up here http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ to be notified of when it is flying over your location.
I think that this is something fantastic to show the kids as it may spark their imagination about space, and get them thinking about science. And since it is school holidays they can stay up a bit later if young.
I got a clear view of it flying overhead for the last 2/3 of its trip across the sky, the first 1/3 was obscured by cloud cover.
ReplyDeleteI was able to see it pass close to directly overhead, which is a cool feeling thinking that straight above you is a mad made object supporting life in space.
Several other people I have spoken to said that they were not able to see it due to cloud cover, and some other people were able to see it, so it depends on where you were in Brisbane relative to the overhead cloud.