The International Space Station is visible flying over the UK

To see a satellite, it must fly over head at either dawn or dusk - when it is dark enough for us to see them, but when sunlight can still shine onto the satellite (for instance, if a satellite flies over-head at midnight, it is in the shadow of the Earth for the entire flyby).

Sometimes, a particular satellite will fly over-head at midday when the daylight is too bright; sometimes it might fly over at midnight when it cannot reflect sunlight.

You might have seen satellites flying over-head yourself and just not realised what you are looking at. The rule of thumb is - if it is flashing, it is an aircraft, but if it is at a steady brightness, then you are looking at a satellite!

For the next week, the International Space Station is ideally placed to be seen flying directly over the UK! The approximate dates and times are listed below...

Date	Time, direction (and altitude) of...
	Appearance	Highest point	Disappearance
8 March	19:26 West (10°)	19:29 South (73°)	19:30 East (52°)
9 March	18:16 South-West (10°)	18:19 South (42°)	18:22 East (10°)
9 March	19:51 West (10°)	19:54 West (70°)	19:54 West (70°)
10 March	18:41 West (10°)	18:44 South (75°)	18:46 East (13°)
11 March	19:06 West (10°)	19:09 North (85°)	19:11 East (23°)
12 March	19:31 West (10°)	19:34 North-West (89°)	19:34 East (47°)
13 March	18:20 West (10°)	18:23 North (85°)	18:26 East (10°)
13 March	19:55 West (10°)	19:58 South-West (61°)	19:58 South-West (61°)
14 March	18:45 West (10°)	18:48 South (89°)	18:51 East (12°)
15 March	19:10 West (10°)	19:13 South (61°)	19:15 East (20°)
16 March	19:35 West (10°)	19:37 South (32°)	19:39 South (24°)
17 March	18:24 West (10°)	18:27 South (59°)	18:30 east (10°)

For other times and locations, see the SpaceWeather flyby predictor.

The Night Sky for March, 2010

March is one of the best times of the year for astronomy, simply because there is so much to see!

Orion and Taurus – along with all the amazing objects that surround that part of the sky, such as Orion's nebula, Betelgeuse, the Pleiades - are visible in the evening, and as they set by midnight, the summer highlights begin to rise in the east – Hercules, the Great Globular cluster, with Vega and the rest of the summer triangle on their way from the morning sky into the evening sky, signalling that summer is not far away.

We can see both Mars and Saturn throughout the night, with the latter rising at sunset. The Moon glides under Mars on the 25th March, and then passes under Saturn a few days later on the 29th. Both Mars and Saturn are quite bright, so they are easy to spot.

For more details, I recommend you use the free planetarium software Stellarium – you can download it for Macs, Windows or Linux.