International Space Station

Applewood Heights Science Department

International Space Station
How to find when the ISS will be in your part of the sky!

ISS Expedition 8 Flight Engineer, Russian Cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri and Commander Michael Foale.

There are 4 parts to this activity. For Part 1 you will be using the internet to find out the present location of the ISS. For Part 2 you will be using the internet to find when the ISS will be passing through your neighbourhood sky. For Part 3 you will be using Starry Night Pro to find and draw the ISS path through the night sky. For part 4 you will go outside tonight and look for the ISS!

Part 1: Where is the ISS right now?

1) Let's see where the ISS is right at this very minute! Click Station Location! Open this in a new window. It updates every minute so you can come back towards the end of the class and see how far it has travelled!

2) Click on the Location tab: You need to fill out the location by clicking on "Find by Name" button

3) Choose Canada and then Toronto, the latitude that will appear is 43.6833 and the longitude is -79.6333

Click on the the little green bar that I've circled in red and a new window will open - Figure 2 (if there is no green bar it means there are no shuttle passes that evening, the thicker the green bar the longer the visible path will be)

This is a picture of the night sky as it will look on Mar 22 at 7:12:22 pm. The green line shows the visible path of the space station, the purple continuation of the line is the path that is not visible to us. Planets and the moon are labelled.

Hit the "+" sign repeatedly and the station will start to move, you will see the path that it will take through the sky! In the above example the shuttle will begin to rise at 7:12:22 pm and set at 7:22:36 pm. At what time will the station be passing the moon?

If you click anywhere on the above figure the altitude(El) and azimuth(Az) is indicated. Can you find Polaris? At what time will the station be passing under Polaris? How long will ISS be visible in the sky?

Go back to the window as shown in figure 1 and hit the Next Day button. Is there a pass on March 23rd? What are the times for the rise and set? Find when the station will rise and set for Mar 24-26, a week of passes. How is the pass on March 26th different from the passes earlier in the week?

Part 3: Using Starry Night to find where the ISS path through the night sky where you live.

1) Open Starry Night and set the date and time to the space station pass from your work above.
2) Use the the Find command (under the selection menu) to search for ISS select it with the arrow tool and show its orbit.
3) Draw the orbit path of the ISS. Make sure your diagram includes the horizon with the directions. Draw and label the following in your diagram: moon, Venus, Mars, Pleides, Casseopeia, Ursa Minor, Polaris, Andromeda Galaxy

And while you're out there check out the Gathering of the Planets!
Every few years or so all five naked-eye planets appear in the evening sky at the same time. You can walk outside after dinner, and without any kind of telescope, see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. The show begins on March 22nd at sundown. By the end of March, Mercury will be sinking back into the glare of the Sun, and soon thereafter the evening planet count will drop from five to four. Four is still a lot of planets. Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus are going to be visible for months. In fact, they will gather even closer together in late April and May, and put on another wonderful show. Meanwhile, enjoy the five while they're there, so easy to see in the evening sky. It won't happen again until 2008.