This weekend you should try to get out and look for the International Space Station as it does a fly-over. The space shuttle Endeavour is working on STS-127 and is currently docked with the ISS. With the added real estate of the shuttle along with the new solar arrays the ISS is bright with reflected sunlight from beyond the horizon and will appear quite large in the sky. Check it out.

Chris Peat’s excellent website, Heavens-Above, makes it easy to catch interesting objects in the night sky. Just plug in your location information and it does the math for you. Armed with that data and some simple optics (a binocular with a large objective is ideal) you are set to see not only the ISS but also the Hubble Space Telescope, various spy and communications satellites as well as space junk from all eras. The Lacrosse series of military reconnaissance satellites are among my favorite to look for because they are large and almost ubiquitous. Your tax dollars at work…

Happy hunting!

Tags: Endeavour, Heavens-Above, International Space Station, Lacrosse, Space Shuttle, spy satellite, stargazing

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Aviation, Military, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.