Many believe that the International Space Station (ISS) flies somewhere very far, and in order to see it (and even more so to photograph it), you need special equipment. However, this is not at all the case. The ISS flies over our heads several times every day and it is no more difficult to see it than an ordinary passenger plane. You just need to know when and where to look. In terms of brightness, the ISS can even compete with Jupiter and Venus, and its rapid movement across the sky attracts even more attention. In this article I want to tell you how and when you can see the ISS tonight in Moscow, I will tell you how to find out the time of flight of the ISS for any other place and date, as well as touch on the topic of photo and video filming of the ISS.
What is required for observations?
Telescopes and binoculars will not help us, even more likely to harm. The fact is that the ISS is moving very quickly, it is difficult to catch and track it with an optical device with a high magnification. This GIF gives some idea of its speed.
And we need a clear sky (tonight this is all right):
… And an open area with good visibility to the south-west, south and south-east (eg supermarket parking, sports ground, building roof, etc.). The proximity of bright lanterns will not hurt us, since the ISS is a very bright object. If you are too lazy to go outside, you can get by with a balcony or window facing south.
You also need a clock synchronized with the exact time, and a compass (in case you do not know at least the approximate directions to the cardinal points at the selected point for observation).
When and where to look?
The ISS makes one orbit in about an hour and a half. This means that if the Earth did not rotate, we would see the ISS passing along the same trajectory every hour and a half. Since the Earth still rotates, the "track" from the ISS on the Earth's surface is shifted to the west with each revolution. In addition, the ISS is visible only when it is itself illuminated by the Sun, while it has already become dark at the observer's location (you can contrive, but this is more difficult). To calculate the current visible passages of the ISS over Moscow, I used the heavens-above.com online service (residents of other cities can easily get visibility conditions of the ISS there on their own). The most favorable flight for observation is expected. today at about 22:47.
The stars on the map will not help us much, since they are not very visible in the city. It's easier to navigate to the cardinal points using a compass. If there is no compass, look for the direction where the evening dawn dies down, there will be northwest.
ISS will ascend in 22:42:30 , but it is too early to start looking for it at this time. Near the horizon, it is not yet bright enough, besides, trees, buildings and haze can interfere with the view. Better to wait until it rises at least 10 degrees above the horizon. This will happen in 22:44:38 , The ISS will be somewhere between west and southwest. You will notice a dim, unblinking star moving slowly to the left and up. This star is the ISS flying somewhere over France at a distance of one and a half thousand kilometers. Do not rush to get upset if you did not manage to notice it at that moment - you could have been hindered by light clouds near the horizon or you yourself were a little misled with the direction. The asterisk will move faster and faster, flare up more and more, and in a minute it will be much easier to find it. The station will reach a maximum altitude of 40 degrees in 22:47:43 being practically in the south in azimuth. At this moment, the ISS will be just below the star Altair, in terms of brightness it will be comparable to Venus, and in terms of angular velocity - with a jet plane. The distance to it will be about 600 km. Then the ISS will descend, moving to the east, and in 22:48:52 will enter the shadow of the Earth. Due to the presence of the atmosphere, the brightness of the station will not drop instantly. It will fade out smoothly for ten seconds. Particularly attentive observers will notice that the ISS will turn red before extinguishing. Indeed, at this moment the astronauts on board will see the sunset, and at sunset the sun's rays turn red. When the station is finally out of sight, look east and, as a bonus, you will see the moon rising.
Note: The times indicated above will be correct with a second precision for an observer on Red Square. If you are far from the center, there will be a few seconds difference. For example, in Reutov, the maximum altitude will be reached 2 seconds later. Entering the shadow, of course, will occur simultaneously for all observers.
Another flight less convenient for observations will occur in a loop earlier, in 21:11 ... You can try to observe it first, but at 9 pm it is still quite light and the ISS will be difficult to notice against the background of a bright sky. In addition, the station will rise by only 28 degrees.
How to take a photo of the ISS or film it?
If you are going to observe the ISS for the first time, then I recommend not to be distracted by the photo for now. Better look with your eyes, get an idea of the brightness and speed. Next time, for example tomorrow, you can already go out with a camera. Set a long exposure of 10-30 seconds. Adjust the aperture and sensitivity so as not to overexpose the sky, but at the same time to see the stars. Mount the camera on a tripod and point it towards the area of the sky where the flight is expected. A few minutes earlier, you can take a test shot in order to be guided by the stars to make sure that the desired area of the sky falls into the frame. As a result, you can get a frame like this (the photo is not mine, I found it on Google Images).
If a flight is expected near the moon, then you can catch an interesting shot. For example, I got this:
In the dynamics it looked like this (filmed with a compact Panasonic HDC-SD90 camcorder).
What about the Moon and Sun transits shown at the beginning of the article?
Recently, news portals spread the news that NASA has published unique images of the ISS against the backdrop of the Moon. Even on Giktimes wrote marks about it. In fact, there is nothing unusual about that photo, you can make sure of this by searching for keywords " iss transit"in Google Images. I was able to take a similar photo and video on my first attempt with rather modest equipment (the same one I used in the article Watching a solar eclipse together):
It is better to watch the video in full screen mode:
The main problem here is that the shadow (or rather penumbra) thrown by the ISS from the Sun or the Moon has dimensions of only a few kilometers. In an arbitrary place, such a phenomenon happens extremely rarely, so you have to wait for the right moment, get into the car and drive several tens of kilometers. To find out when and where to go, you can use the calsky.com service. There you can get a map showing where the shadow of the ISS will run in the next couple of days. For example, here is a fragment of the map of the nearest transit on the Moon.
Conclusion
Hopefully, thanks to this article, many readers will go outside tonight and look up at the sky. I suggest you share your impressions in the comments!
If you like watching the night sky, then it will be interesting for you to know that the ISS can be observed over Russia today, as well as in the coming days. This was reported on the website of the Moscow Planetarium. The phenomenon is truly unique, because you do not need any devices for observation. So that you can go out and observe the ISS in the sky today, and so on until July 21.
To calculate the time and trajectory of the International Space Station for your region, please visit www.heavens-above.com. To do this, you need to select your location in the panel located in the upper right corner, and then on the main page section - "Satellites-ISS".
Many people dream of seeing the ISS in the sky, at the same time it is not so difficult to do, reports the Ros-Registr portal. It is important to know where and when to look. You don't need telescopes or binoculars for observation. The ISS is moving very fast, and it is extremely difficult to catch it with an optical device. But with the naked eye, under certain conditions, it is visible very well. In terms of brightness, the International Space Station can compete even with Jupiter and Venus, and its rapid movement across the sky attracts the attention of observers.
“In Russia, the nearest favorable visibility period for the ISS will come from 12 to 21 July 2018. It will be possible to observe the station after midnight in most of Russia.
Alexander Perkhnyak, astrophysicist, employee of the Moscow Planetarium: “There are some simple recommendations for those who want to see the ISS flyby. Special applications on smartphones will help you with this, for example ISS Detector or ISS Spotter. During the flight, you just need to look at the sky above the western horizon. The station looks like a bright, fast-moving and flickering white star, which, as it moves and enters the Earth's shadow, can change to reddish-orange. By the way, it is at this moment that the astronauts on board will see the sunset, ”the Moscow Planetarium reports.
Perhaps this is one of the last opportunities to see the station, because they want to drown it. "The Americans no longer have money for the ISS." "NASA's short budget will be saved, the ISS project is being phased out." "The US government wants to force NASA to stop supporting the ISS." The news channels spread like an absolute sensation the amendments to the American budget, spied on by one of the journalists, for as much as 2025.
The subtext of the publications is generally simple: the Americans decide to withdraw from the project, abandon their partners - Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, the Japanese, the Canadians. And then, apparently, they will personally work ahead of the curve - forging their own lunar program.
A few years ago, the countries that created the International Space Station agreed: it flies until 2024. Well, look, our Mir station has been flying for 15 years. Rather, its base unit, the rest of the modules were significantly younger. And in this base unit, after 11 years, unpleasant things began to happen: for example, liquid was leaking from the system that maintained the correct temperature on board. The last crews leaving for the station, for the most part, were engaged in its repair. And the Zvezda service module - the brain and muscles of the ISS - is essentially an analogue of the Mira base unit. And he has been flying for almost 18 years. True, there are, fortunately, no such problems on it as on Mir. But by 2024, the "Star" will wind its orbits over the Earth for almost a quarter of a century - a bit too much.
By and large, not only American financiers understand that the further operation of the ISS is throwing money down the drain. Experience in the construction of serious residential spaces in space has been gained: now the station's mass is almost 450 tons, a whole train. This is important for building a Martian spacecraft in the future (it will be assembled from modules in orbit in the same way). It remains to complete biological experiments for the same Martian program - it is not yet very clear how to keep the crews working during the entire 500-day flight to the Red Planet and back. The Americans are planning to conduct several more important experiments on living people - ten astronauts will work in orbit for a year.
Well, the ISS is also needed to test the flights of new manned spacecraft - they are now being developed by both the United States and Russia. These ships will make up the fleet of mankind, which will fly to the moon, to asteroids and to Mars. The remaining six years should be enough for everything.
The main question is what will happen after 2024? And you need to answer it now.
Humanity cannot stop manned flights. Simply because the loss of the experience that is gained over time can end up costing much more than the savings from discontinuing programs. It's like an athlete - if he doesn't train, it will be very difficult for him to get back into shape, sometimes impossible. The Americans, on the other hand, had their own Skylab orbital station (three crews worked on it in 1973-74). And in the 90s, the United States had to cooperate with Russia, create the Mir-NASA program, send its astronauts to our station simply because the experience of long-term flights into orbit was lost and it had to be accumulated anew.
At the recent Royal Readings at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Evgeny Mikrin, General Designer for Manned Space Systems and Complexes, RSC Energia, described everything clearly. By 2019, the construction of the Russian segment of the ISS should be completed - the multipurpose laboratory module "Science" (it will become the largest module of the station), the nodal module "Prichal" and the scientific energy module (NEM) will be docked to it.
They are designed so that at any time they can be undocked from the ISS and turned into a separate station. A gateway module and a transformable module will be added (it is being tested just now). NEM will become the brain of the station. In general, the completion of the ISS operation for the Russian cosmonautics will not become some kind of tragic event. We fly further.
Do you want to track the ISS online and be ready to be in time to observe the station? But how do you know when the ISS will fly over your house or garden? Here are the best online services for that.
First, NASA has a Fast & Easy Observations website where you simply find your country and city and then display the date, local time, observation duration, and ISS approach data so you don't miss a station in the sky. True, there is one drawback - it is not possible for all countries and cities to determine the ISS coordinates online. So, for example, only large cities are available for Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Volgograd, Tver, Tula, Samara, Stavropol, Pskov, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Rostov, Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok and other megacities. In other words, if you live in a small settlement, you can only rely on information for the city closest to you.
Second, Heavens Above is also an excellent resource for finding out when the ISS is flying over you in the sky, as well as all sorts of other satellites. Unlike NASA's website, Heaven-Above allows you to enter your exact latitude and longitude. Thus, if you live in a remote area, you can get the exact time and location to start looking for satellites on your own. The site also offers registration to visitors to enhance its capabilities and usability.
Third, Spaceweather has its own Satellite page that provides information to the US and Canada. But you can also use this link for other countries. It is interesting that you can set the calculation of coordinates not only for the ISS, but also, for example, for the Hubble telescope or satellites. For the countries of the North American continent, you only need to specify the ZIP code and select the object. For other continents, you select Country - Region / State - Locality. For example, I managed to find the coordinates of satellites and the ISS for Moscow Khimki. However, this site is often overloaded, as it is very popular with observers.
There is also this very cool monitoring of the movement of the ISS from Google. You cannot specify data for calculating the time and coordinates of the ISS location, but you have the opportunity to watch online the movement of the station.
The flight trajectory of the International Space Station in real time can also be traced on a special page of the official website of the Russian Space Flight Control Center (this requires installing the Java (TM) plugin). In addition to the flight path, you can learn about the orientation of the International Space Station, look into the ISS flight archive, and much more.
Additionally, you can receive an alert on Twitter when the space station is overflying you. To do this, use
Text
Artyom Luchko
When talking about the ISS, few people think that it is closer than it seems. Due to its size and constant orbit, most people on our planet can see the international station with the naked eye. It is possible that you have already seen it before, but did not know about it.
The ISS flies past us several times a day, but it becomes visible when several factors coincide. The ISS is illuminated by the sun, and during the flight over a certain segment, it reflects sunlight in the same way as, for example, the Moon. To see the ISS from the Earth, it is necessary to be in the correct position relative to the Sun and the observed object. We've put together a few guidelines to help you track a station in the sky on your own.
Spot the station
One of the easiest ways to track the ISS is by subscribing to the NASA Spot The Station newsletter, created especially for enthusiasts like you and me. In the Sign Up for Alerts section, select a country, city and enter your e-mail. Note which flights you will track - morning, evening or all. After confirming registration, NASA will notify you by e-mail every 12 hours before the upcoming flight of the station.
The ISS always flies from west to east. Of course, the station is not as spectacular as the Death Star from Star Wars - rather, it looks like a very bright and incredibly fast moving star. A white object turns orange as it moves, entering the shadow of the Earth, until it completely disappears from the field of view. To see the station, set yourself an alert on your phone, go outside at the right time and peer carefully at the sky above the horizon in the west.
The International Space Station, whose first module was launched in 1998, is currently the largest structure in space. Together with the solar cell farms, the ISS is 72 m long, 108 m wide and 20 m high, and its area is comparable to a football field.
Such a whopper, which is a laboratory, factory, training ground and home for the crew members, orbits the Earth between 330 and 410 km at an average speed of 27,724 km / h and makes 15.7 revolutions around the planet per day. Reflecting sunlight, the station is very noticeable even from a distance of many hundreds of kilometers and sometimes, crossing the sky, it "flashes" brighter than any star. Therefore, observers often mistook the ISS for a UFO.
Online tools
There are many resources on the Internet about the ISS, as well as twitter accounts, for example, @twisst and @virtualastro, which help to determine the time of flight of the station. But the most convenient and popular site where you can find information about the exact time, a specific area of the sky, the brightness of an object is Heavens-above.com
On its main page, you can see a diagram depicting the Earth and a space station flying around it, which displays the location of the ISS in real time.
In the upper right corner, you can select the language, as well as the coordinates from where you will be monitoring. To do this, you need to click on the Unspecified link, type in your settlement in the search bar and move the red icon as close as possible to the specific place where you are. After that, click the "Apply" button and select the ISS in the "Satellites" section. You will see a table with data on the flights of the station for the next 10 days.
All the information in the table may seem more complicated than it actually is. The first point is the maximum brightness of the station in magnitudes. Following are the time when the ISS will appear in the field of view (accurate to the second), its height above the horizon (in degrees) and azimuth, where Z means west and SW- southwest and so on. Then there are three columns with data about the moment when the station rises above the horizon (the time when this will happen, the height and part of the horizon). The next three columns show similar data for the end of visibility.
By clicking on each of the dates in the table, you can view the trajectory of the ISS flight in the starry sky. If you are well versed in the stars, you can fine tune the camera in this area of the sky to capture the flight.
Interesting to a recent post:
when I watched the eclipse, I also saw a bright object flying high from west to east, relatively bright as compared to the stars. revised the approximate time, magnitude and direction of the Stellarium program. it turned out that it was the ISS)
I was always surprised by the statements that the ISS and other satellites declared by the officials can be seen from the Earth with the naked eye. Let's try to figure it out.
The ISS orbit is declared at an altitude of 408 km.
Max. the size of the station is declared 109 meters (together with deployed batteries). This is about 4 carriages of a passenger train or 7 trucks (20-ton trucks, euro trucks).
And as far as I know, the ISS is the largest orbiting object (of our civilization).
Now remember the view from the airplane window during the flight.
Do you remember? Was there a good view of the trucks or trains below?
And this is only 10 km of altitude ...
To check, consider the following thing:
Here are 2 islands on Lake Chapala in Mexico.
I chose them for two reasons:
1. On the surface of the water, the island is better visible than any other artifact on the ground, which is all built up and objects are mixed into a mess at a distance (you can, of course, look for solar battery farms in the desert for maximum clarity, but laziness. If you find it, please inform)
2. One of the islands is clearly visible from a height, it can be used as a reference point
Pay attention to the small island. Its dimensions are 2.5 times larger than the ISS (~ 260 by 100 m) and it is perfectly visible from an altitude of 5.44 km, as well as a large row:
And now we are climbing to an altitude of 400 km:
Do you see such a small dot there right between the tip of the arrow and the letter P?
This big island and it is barely visible. The little one disappeared altogether.
I looked at the usual Google Earth at a screen resolution of 1920x1080. You can try it yourself.
It is clear that the ISS and its mirror batteries can gleam, but is this light enough to be visible from Earth?
Other satellites, as far as I know, do not at all exceed the size of machines in orbits of at least 200 km, and this is for spy vehicles, which will obviously not be included in civilian databases.
If such arguments seem insufficient to you, remember that 400 km is the distance from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod.
And try to consider not even a separate building, but the whole city from such a distance)
Or just take a look at Earth in reverse, better full screen:
Earth from space in 4k. Flights of the ISS over the continents of the Earth, the latest images. VITA mission. ESA 2018
Leman Lake Geneva is visible at 1:45.
The arrow marks the Geneva airport Cointrin, against the general background of the city it can also be used as a landmark:
This is how it looks in full screen with 4K video quality:
The length of the runway is ~ 4 km, the width with lawns is ~ 400 m, but even it is almost invisible from an altitude of 400 km!
So can you see the ISS from this distance, what do you think?
And bonus questions of our quiz:
Who or what is taking all these masterpiece images of the ISS from a couple of hundred meters, a quadcopter, a satellite, a paparazzi-kamikaze?
Why don't you ever see stars on them, except in cases of explicit CGI with Photoshop?
ALL video clips of the cosmonauts' spacewalk were filmed from the board, there is NO ONE VIDEO filmed from the side, only graphics! Can you explain this?
And why not record such interesting eclipses on the ISS cameras, because NASA and other agencies constantly broadcast them from Earth? ;)
FRT from comments:
This is how the height of the ISS looks like 400 km in comparison with the planet.
What illuminates it from below, city lanterns? because the sun can only do this for a VERY short period
Is it possible from this height to see such a refraction of the surface, as we are shown, i.e. almost a quarter of the planet, and sometimes more?
OS
