The International Space Station will be visible flying over the UK for another week (before it starts flying over in daytime), so do take a look... and don't forget to wave at the six astronauts currently on board as they fly overhead!
The space station orbits the Earth every 96 minutes, but for us to clearly see it, the ISS needs to fly over at dawn and dusk. We see the space station thanks to sunlight reflecting off it, mainly off the huge solar panels the size of a football field. If it flies overhead in the daytime, the sky is too bright for us to see it; and if it flies over head at night, then the station is in the shadow of the Earth, and so we can't see any reflected sunlight.
For the next week, we are lucky - on some nights we can see the ISS fly overhead on two consecutive orbits, one 96 minutes after the other.
Date | Starts | Maximum height | Ends | ||||||
| Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | |
| 5 May | 21:01:04 | 10 | W | 21:04:00 | 86 | NW | 21:07:00 | 10 | E |
| 5 May | 22:36:23 | 10 | W | 22:39:22 | 82 | N | 22:40:16 | 41 | E |
| 6 May | 21:26:09 | 10 | W | 21:29:07 | 73 | N | 21:32:05 | 10 | E |
| 6 May | 23:01:26 | 10 | WNW | 23:04:09 | 62 | SW | 23:04:09 | 62 | SW |
| 7 May | 21:51:11 | 10 | W | 21:54:10 | 83 | N | 21:56:30 | 15 | E |
| 8 May | 20:40:53 | 10 | W | 20:43:51 | 73 | N | 20:46:49 | 10 | E |
| 8 May | 22:16:10 | 10 | W | 22:19:07 | 63 | SSW | 22:20:18 | 31 | SE |
| 9 May | 21:05:51 | 10 | W | 21:08:49 | 85 | N | 21:11:47 | 10 | E |
| 9 May | 22:41:13 | 10 | W | 22:43:54 | 32 | SSW | 22:44:03 | 32 | SSW |
| 10 May | 21:30:45 | 10 | W | 21:33:41 | 61 | SSW | 21:36:19 | 12 | ESE |
| 11 May | 21:55:44 | 10 | W | 21:58:24 | 31 | SSW | 22:00:02 | 18 | SSE |
| 13 May | 21:10:07 | 10 | W | 21:12:45 | 29 | SSW | 21:15:22 | 10 | SSE |
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