Want to see Space Station in the sky from your house, sign-up for email or SMS alerts
Starting from the last century, man-made objects also started appearing in the sky. Natural objects such as moon and stars are visible in the night from the dawn of living creature’s presence on Earth but now synthetic or man-made objects could also be seen.
While celebrating the 12th continuous year of International Space Station’s (ISS’s) operation, NASA has introduced an alert system through “Spot the Station” offering email or SMS alerts for about 4,600 places in the world with a few hours warning. These alerts will be about the appearance of ISS in the sky based on the calculations made by the Johnson Space Center.
After signing up for the alerts through spotthestation.nasa.gov, users will be able to check the direction from which ISS would appear and the duration for which ISS would stay in the night sky.
According to NASA, the Station is a “fast moving point of light, similar in size and brightness to the planet Venus”, so it’s visible to the naked eye. It is especially visible at the dawn or dusk, when moon is the only object visible in the sky.
“It’s really remarkable to see the space station fly overhead and to realize humans built an orbital complex that can be spotted from Earth by almost anyone looking up at just the right moment,” William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said in a statement.
It would be interesting to listen when a father would say to his children, “Let’s move out to see the big advanced toys of technology”.
