Right now, its a beautiful day here in the Chicago area, with pleasant temperatures and fairly clear skies. If this holds for the next five or six hours, we will have another nice chance to see a flyover of the International Space Station, just before 5:30PM. It will appear above the horizon a bit North of the Western compass point at 5:28PM, cross high in the Southwestern sky, and disappear into the Earths shadow above the Southeast horizon six and a half minutes later. The reflected sunlight illuminating the solar panels will be very bright -- about as bright as the planet Venus usually is. Its light will NOT flicker, because just as the planets do, it will be reflecting sunlight back into our eyes (stars flicker because they are actually burning massive amounts of fuel, and the burning create explosions that our eyes translate into flickering). It should appear as a bright golden color because of the solar panels, and move slowly and steadily across the sky. There are currently six human beings riding in the machine (2 male and one female Russian cosmonauts, 2 male American astronauts, and one female astronaut from the European Space Agency). It is currently about 268 miles (431 kilometers) above the Earth, traveling a little over 17,000 miles per hour (27,500 km/h), and it circles the Earth about once every hour and a half. Good luck with your viewing.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:38:45 +0000
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