Space Nerd Alert: Very Bright Pass of International Space Station over Perth Tonight
International Space Station : A very bright International Space Station will pass over Perth at 7.25pm tonight.
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet,” the late Prof Stephen Hawking once said, well we can start by looking up at the International Space Station tonight over Perth.
If you look up and the sky is clear (there may be cloud cover), you and Perth’s 2 million inhabitants will be able to view the ISS for around 5-minutes, as it passes from south west to north east – right across the state of Western Australia.
If you look up around 7.23pm you’ll see it appear to the south-west of the city, as it travels over the Indian Ocean toward the Perth coast.
By 7.26pm the ISS will be pretty much directly over Perth city, with a -3.2 magnitude brightness, meaning the Space Station will be quite clearly visible.
The ISS has been circling our planet for nearly 20-years, but rarely does it pass right over the city, so brightly, at such a convenient time for us.
Who’s up there right now?
Wave : Expedition 55 crew poses for an official crew portrait at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. In the front row (from left) are Scott Tingle of NASA, Commander Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. In the back row (from left) are NASA astronauts Ricky Arnold and Andrew Feustel and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev.
We were alerted to the Passover by Space enthusiast Ignazio Magnani.
?? Perth !
The International Space Station is visible to the naked eye (if clouds allow) today at 7:25 pmTip: ?set your alarm⏰
?? Crew Expedition 55 https://t.co/bC53NECiAl
? Spot the ISS https://t.co/T0dcZjuXih
? Sat. HD Timelapse https://t.co/CreCUPE0Hy pic.twitter.com/DThI4JtEGS— Ignazio Magnani (@IgnazioMagnani) March 14, 2018
When, where and what are we looking at?
Look up at 7.23pm (maybe go outside a few minutes earlier to adjust your eyes).
Look about 10 degrees above the horizon to the south-west, it’ll appear to be moving at speed toward Perth, flying over about 50km to the south-east of the Perth CBD at 7.26pm, at 74 degrees above the horizon.
The Passover should be visible right up to 7.29pm as the ISS moves to the north-east.
Perth from Space
What Perth looks like from the ISS while it passes over Perth. Photo from NASA taken by Astronauts in the ISS.
Western Australia as seen from Space
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