Friday, February 1, 2008

See the ISS tonight for about 9 minutes from Santa Barbara

According to the NASA Skywatch Application, the International Space Station will be visible to the naked eye as it passes over Santa Barbara tonight from 6:08 to 6:17 tonight in the WNW to NW sky(~3oo°). Let me know if you see it.
link
-R

What prompted this post?
Day to Day interviewed a guy from Texas yesterday named Thomas Dorman who tracks satellites and other stuff orbiting the Earth, much of it observable with the naked eye. It seems there is a lot of metal falling around the Earth. I wonder how many times I have mistaken a satellite for a meteor.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to be able to look up and say, "Look there goes the ISS." Perhaps tonight.

I contacted Mr. Dorman, and he suggested that I use the resources at www.heavens-above.com to track orbitals passing overhead. They have a lot of information about the dozens of communication satellites owned by the Iridium company (a very interesting business story by the way).

1 comment:

Roy said...

Cloudy conditions.