Spot the Station

There are advantages and disadvantages to rural living.  For instance, access to doctors, dentists and accountants is not very convenient.  Same for hardware stores.  These are simple disadvantages.  

Advantages include fresh air, peace and quiet, hunting access, exercising the dogs off-lead and night skies.  Yup, star-gazing.  I’ve blogged about this before and the subject of light pollution.   Escaping the urban environment brings darker skies.   And as a consequence viewing constellations, planets, meteor showers and such is more easily accomplished.   

One of my most favorite pastimes is viewing the ISS – short for International Space Station.  It is one of the brightest objects as it crosses the sky.  The hitch is that the navigation of the sky by this satellite is fast.  It appears above the horizon and in a matter of moments crosses the night sky and disappears over the opposite horizon.   Furthermore it is unpredictable (relative to stuff like constellations, the moon and planets) so it’s helpful to have advance warning of its arrival and from what direction.   

NASA.Gov

I use NASA's Spot The Station site, which furnishes me dates and times and where to look based on my latitude and longitude.  Alerts are sent hours in-advance by email or text.   

Among several astronomy apps I make use of is Night Sky – an app on my Smartphone.  Available for Apple and Android devices this tool has a significant amount of information on the screen and all I have to do is aim my device in the direction of where I’m viewing and stars, planets, constellations and satellites are usefully arrayed on the screen for ease of identification. 

If I get an email from NASA about the arrival of the ISS the Night Sky app allows me to spot it while it is still out of sight and below the horizon.   Night Sky also includes data-about and country of origin for man-made objects too numerous to list here.  

So get with the program and get yourself outdoors and view the heavens above.  People have been doing this for as long as there have been people - only the technology is better nowadays.