ISS, Tiangong, Satellites Over Puna

[SBH]

Went out to see it, but too cloudy and raining. Glad for the rain though. Good morning Puna!

[TomK]

There are several passes of the ISS during the next two or three days. I'll post the Saturday passes tomorrow (Friday, March 24th) but very briefly:

Friday morning (24th March): Rises at 05:03:06 in the north, highest point is only 25 degrees above the horizon in the NE at 05:05:52 and sets in the ESE almost 3 minutes later. It's bright (about the same as Sirius) but not spectacular. (Apologies for the late posting).

Friday evening: Rises at 19:57:41 in the WSW, highest point is 42 degrees above the horizon in the NW, sets less than a minute later in the NNW. This one is much brighter, so easy to spot if the sky is clear.

There are two spectacular passes coming up. The first on Saturday evening, the second on Sunday morning. Both have the ISS almost as bright as Venus at its best. I'll post details tomorrow (Friday).

[SBH]

Thanks Tom. Too cloudy, rainy again this morning. Not complaining about the rain though. Hopefully we can see it this weekend.

Supermassive black hole with a mass one billion times our sun's is traveling at 7.5 million kilometers per hour.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1706/

We better start running!

[SBH]

Just saw the ISS fly by. They tweeted photos earlier of Hawaii today.

[TomK]

Thanks, SBH, we saw it as well! Tomorrow (Saturday) evening's pass will be about 3 times brighter, although it's much earlier and still in twilight but should be easy to spot. Details soon.

[TomK]

OK, Saturday evening, March 25th:

Rises at 19:05:15 in the SSW and rises to its highest point in the SW (65 degrees above the horizon) at 19:08:26. It sets in the NE at 19:11:39. It'll be very bright, so even though it'll be in twilight, it should be easy to spot if the sky is clear.

It appears again early Sunday morning. For early-risers, this is an easy one to see (it will be slightly brighter than the evening pass). Simply look straight up at 04:57:30. It will come out of the Earth's shadow almost at its highest point, so you'll basically see something as bright as Venus suddenly appear at the zenith and then head off towards the SE horizon.

[TomK]

PS. For a change of targets, although the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is often observable from Hawaii, it's making some relatively bright passes on April 21 through 24. It's much more challenging to spot than the ISS, but if anyone is curious and up to trying, let me know here and I'll give details nearer the time.

[AKpilot]

I loved to hunt satellites when I was a kid Iridiums were my favorite. Of course back then I had no idea of Altitude/Azimuth, RA/Dec. Heck, I just climbed up onto our roof and looked for stuff that moved in the night sky! In the words of Jack Horkheimer......... Keep Looking Up!

Akpilot

We're all here, because we're not all there!

[TomK]

Decades ago, when I first went to a dark site, I saw my first satellites. I knew what they were but there was still the mystery of what they were, who owned them and what they were doing. Then, a couple of decades later, it became much easier to use the internet to figure out what the satellites I watched were, but you still had to go back inside to look them up!

Now, I find myself in a job where part of my responsibilities are to identify the space debris that might impact our most important communication satellites before there is a catastrophic collision that could change how we all live.

How things change!

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

It's looking good Tom, barely a cloud in the sky over HPP & less than an hour to go:

7:05 PM
Visible: 6 min
Max Height: 62°
Appears: 11° above SSW
Disappears: 10° above NE

You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.