Astroblog: Bright International Space Station Passes Near the Moon (4-11 March 2014)

Sunday, March 02, 2014

Bright International Space Station Passes Near the Moon (4-11 March 2014)


The ISS passes near the Moon, as seen from Melbourne on the evening of Friday March 7 at 21:07 AEDST. Simulated in Stellarium (the ISS will actually be a bright dot), click to embiggen.	The ISS passes near the Moon, as seen from Adelaide on the evening of Friday March 7 at 20:35:32 ACDST. Th iset shows an enlarged view of how close the two will get. Simulated in Stellarium (the ISS will actually be a bright dot), click to embiggen.	The ISS passes near the Moon, as seen from Perth on the evening of Friday March 7 at 19:37 AWST. Simulated in Stellarium (the ISS will actually be a bright dot), click to embiggen.

All sky chart showing local times from Heavens Above for Friday March 7 for Melbourne.	All sky chart showing local times from Heavens Above for Friday March 7 for Adelaide.	All sky chart showing local times from Heavens Above for Friday March 7 for Perth.

Starting Wednesday there are a series of bright evening passes of the International Space Station. For many places in Australia this series has the ISS gliding close to the Moon. For most places the best time is the evening of Friday March 7, but there are good passes on the 6th, 8th and 9th as well.

When and what you will see is VERY location dependent, so you need to use either Heavens Above or CalSky to get site specific predictions for your location (I'm using Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth as examples, the view from Melbourne is different from that of Adelaide and Perth on the evening of Friday March 7).

Note that from Adelaide the ISS is VERY close to the Moon. Places a little more mort may see the ISS go directly over the Moon.

Start looking several minutes before the pass is going to start to get yourself oriented and your eyes dark adapted. Be patient, on the night there may be slight differences in the time of the ISS appearing due to orbit changes not picked up by the predictions. The ISS will be moving reasonably fast when it passes near the Moon, so you need to be alert or you will miss it.

Labels: ISS, Moon