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Originally Posted by Jason Green  So, did the Space Station appear to be like a normal star or fly like a comet? How long did it last for, minutes or seconds? |
The ISS takes a few minutes to cross the sky.
However - depending what time of night, and your location - you can see it from anything around a few seconds - right up to the several minutes it takes to cross the whole sky.
Because of it's height, it is still in sunlight, even though we are in darkness (it's the reflected sunlight that we see from the ground)
Eventually, it heads into the Earth's shadow - it's still there, just that we can't see it.
It appears like a bright star, which moves across the sky about the speed of an aeroplane - when it heads into the Earth's shadow, it dims and looks orangey until it completely fades.
Binoculars help the view - and in fact I have seen hints of detail with nothing more than standard 10x50 binoculars - the glare can sometimes be too much to see details in binocs, but you can often catch some details as it fades.
The toolbag is roughly 7th magnitude (the dimmest star you can see from a countryside observing site is about 6th magnitude) so it isn't visible by naked-eye - but binoculars will pick it up if you get yor timing right.
It is about 5 mins ahead of the station, and follows pretty much the same track across the sky
Unfortunately, ISS passes are done for the latest 'session' - but they come round regularly - give it another few weeks, and re-check 'Heavens-above'
In the meantime - it's interesting to watch for Iridium flares - details of these are also available on heavens-above.
Imagine reflecting the Sun onto a wall, for a cat to play with - using a watch-face, or small mirror.
This is pretty mush what an Iridium flare is - the Sun bounces off reflective surfaces of the 'Iridium' series of satellites - and if you are in the small area on the ground where the sunlight is reflected, you see the satellite 'flare' - often VERY bright, for a period of 2 to 20 seconds
These are very localised events - so enter your co-ordinates into heavens-above as accurately as possible - as little as a mile off, and it can make a big difference to the predicted brightness - may not even show at all.
Iridium flares are very commonly mistaken as UFOs