Astroblog: Morning Space Station on the Weekend

Friday, May 21, 2010

Morning Space Station on the Weekend

The International Space Station glides past Jupiter at 6:33 am ACST as seen from Adelaide (no, the ISS will look like a bright star, not like a spacecraft, that's the way Stellarium 10.3 displays it)

This weekend (22-23 May) the International Space Station will be very bright (almost as bright as Venus) and will pass very close to the bright planets Jupiter and Mercury. The sky will be in twilight but the ISS and Jupiter will be very obvious, very good for early bird risers.

In South Australia and Southern WA the ISS is seen on Saturday morning at roughly 6:30 am local time. In Adelaide, at 06:33 am the ISS will be high in the northern sky, very bright and moving East, a minute or so later it passes Jupiter (the brightest object in the sky aside from the ISS at this point, and then around 6:36 am it passes Mercury low in the north-eastern sky. In WA the ISS passes closer to Mercury than Jupiter.

On the East Coast the ISS passes close to the bright planets on Sunday morning at roughly 6:00 am local time. In Sydney, at 5:54 am the ISS will be high in the northern sky, very bright and moving East, a minute or so later it passes Jupiter (the brightest object in the sky aside from the ISS at this point, and then around 5:57 am it passes Mercury low in the north-eastern sky.

Darwin misses out completely.

For exact predictions for you local site see http://www.heavens-above.com/

For more ISS goodness, see Thierry Legault's amazing images of the ISS in 3D and the ISS and shuttle Atlantis in front of the Sun.

Labels: ISS, Jupiter, Mercury, unaided eye observation