Look up (and witness an ISS flyby)

Ever wanted to watch the International Space Station fly through the night sky over your own house? Keep your calendar up to date with upcoming visible flybys, in two simple steps.

More information: ISS flyby basics, Help, Options, About

Flybys of the International Space Station

Currently being the second brightest object in the night sky (that is, besides the moon), the International Space Station can easily be observed. The station is often visible as a very bright and sharp star-like dot that slowly moves across the night sky. If you're lucky (you can get lucky!), the ISS may be visible from horizon to horizon, flying right over your location, lasting up to a few minutes (the station flies at just under 28000 kilometers per hour).

In a flyby season (about a week, every few weeks, dependent on your location), the timing, location and lighting of the ISS is right so you can observe flybys. Visible flybys occur just after sunset, or before sunrise, when the station is basking in the sun (it flies about 350 kilometer high above the Earth), and you experience a dark night sky.

The space station is pretty big, about the size of a soccer/football field. Most of this are solar arrays, which not only collect a huge amount of energy, but reflect a lot of sunlight to earth, making the station easily visible. Still, the space on the inside of the station is 240 cubic meters. That's pretty big. Did you know that with a nice pair of binoculars, you can make out some of the station's shape? That's awesome. Do it.

Help

How do I subscribe to a calendar with my calendar software?

This websitelet adopts the iCalendar protocol to keep your calendar software updated with upcoming flybys. Most calendar software (like iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar, ...) support subscriptions to these .ics files via the webcal:// protocol so your calendar is automatically updated with upcoming flybys.

The following shows the process of subscribing to a calendar with iCal on Mac OSX

Pinpoint your location on the map
Click the "Subscribe with your calendar software" link
Since iCal is associated with the text/calendar content-type, .ics files served through webcal:// are automatically opened with iCal
iCal asks you whether you want to subscribe to the calendar, acknowledge
You can set up some options, make sure to set the Auto-refresh to every day, or every week (more frequent doesn't help anyway).
Click OK, and you're done.

Here's how to subscribe with Google Calendar

Pinpoint your location on the map
Copy the URL of the "Subscribe with your calendar software" link
In Google Calendar, click the "Add/Add by URL" link under "Other Calendars" in the list on the left
Paste the link you have copied before
Click "Add" and you are ready to go

I don't use Outlook or other calendar software, but the process should be similar to that of the above programs.

How do I keep updated by syncing my phone?

If you can sync your phone with your calendar software, download or subscribe to calendars of upcoming ISS flybys, below, and make sure that your phone's calendar is synced. Five minutes ahead of a flyby, your phone will ring an alarm, and provide you with elementary information about the flyby. Obviously, this is only true if your calendar software and phone are capable of understanding iCalendar alarms. I'm using iCal on Mac OS X and an iPhone for this, which works great.

I'm not getting any results in my calendar. What's up with that?

If you're not getting any flybys in your calendar, that's probably because it's currently not the season, unfortunately ... Visible flybys occur in (about) a week of consecutive days, and after such a season, you have to wait a few weeks for them to reappear. If you don't live too close the poles, you'll probably get some flybys soon. Subscribe to the calendar, and let your calendar software do the rest. You will be automatically notified when the new season starts!

I don't understand the information in the calendar's events

An event is marked in your calendar with a title, such as "ISS -2.3". This denotes a flyby of the ISS, at apparent magnitude -2.3. The magnitude tells you something about the brightness of the flyby. A lower magnitude equals a brighter flyby. The calendars only include flybys with a brightness below 0. A brightness of 0 can be observed when other stars are visible, and less than -1.5 is brighter than any other star. (a full moon may get well below -12)

The event provides a semi-cryptic description of the flight path, so you can expect where the station will be flying. An example of such a flight path is "12WSW - 80SSE - 10E". In this example, the station will become visible in West-South-West direction, at an altitude of 12 degrees (that's how high it is, 0 degrees is the horizon, 90 degrees is straight up). Next, the station will rise up to an altitude of 80 degrees, in a slight SSE direction, almost straight up. Finally, the station will disappear in Eastern direction.

The calendar event also provides an URL to more information of the flyby at heavens-above.com.

About "Look up"

lookup.liekens.net is a websitelet (a one page web site with a minimalist service) whose sole purpose is to provide (automatically updated) calendars of upcoming ISS flybys, powered by data from heavens-above.com (with permission). This service is merely an extra layer to generate electronic calendars in a common format. Technically, I'm taking Ruby along for a ride on Apache, Passenger, Rack and Sinatra.

Concept, and realization of this websitelet is by Anthony Liekens.

Options

You may want to set the following options before downloading or subscribing to a calendar of flybys:

Only show events with an apparant magnitude of and brighter (lower magnitude = brighter flyby)
Include an alarm, minutes ahead of a flyby

1. Pinpoint your location

Where are you?

Latitude: Longitude:

2. Get ISS flyby predictions

The following links automagically provide flyby predictions for your location.