No! Its a man-made object! The space shuttle Discovery docks with the Space Station around 10am today. Tonight we are forecasting clear skies and low humidity, visibility should be great (especially for summer). With the two linked up you’ll be able to see the duo move across the sky. It’ll be brighter than the brightest star in the sky (Sirius at a magnitude of -1.4, Mars registers usually around -3 or -4 so is much brighter since it is a nearby planet). It’ll be moving fast, the ISS circles the earth every 1.5 hours (that’s moving over 17,000mph) about 210 miles overhead (about the distance from Nashville to Memphis) so it’ll only be in our portion of the night sky about 2 minutes.
According to the NASA viewing table, look about 38 degrees above the horizon to the west and watch a white “star” move to the southeast. It is quite a sight!
uhhh….jeff??? which two minutes tonight…dont want to miss it. thnx
Jay, If you click on the “viewing table” link in Jeff’s post you will get the dates and times.
Anybody else see the Shuttle at 9:23pm go by? I saw it go over… it was cool!
I DID happen to see it! I looked up at the sky ’cause the moon was so pretty. And I remembered that this morning Jeff said you would be able to see the shuttle tonight about 9:30. It was so pretty, like a fast moving star! I was thrilled to catch it! Thanks for letting us know, Jeff!
Almost missed it, I was looking in the west, for some reason I thought it was going to go by in the distance from southwest to northwest.
My son was outside with me and he spotted it as it came directly twords us from the west and passed directly overhead disapearing in the east.
Didn’t manage to get a lock on with the telescope and camera though…
i saw it last night. I was on the 2nd story of my roof when I saw what I was sure could not have been the ISS, becuase it was moving so fast. Alas, it followed the course the link said it would, so I derived that must have been it.