Tonight I climbed up on the roof of my house with the intention of seeing the space shuttle Atlantis and International Space Station (ISS) fly over southeastern Michigan just before 11:00pm EDT. I missed them last night so I was bummed when I saw the horizon was cloud covered and the kids on the street behind us were blowing off some fireworks in the line of sight, but I was not disappointed!
The orbit took the two satellites from the northwest horizon to the southeast. They were only in the clear sky for a short time, maybe 10 seconds. It was an impressive site and well worth the effort. I probably could have seen the shuttle orbiter and space station from the ground, but the homes behind us are colonials and the orbit was 30 degrees off the horizon. I thought for sure the homes would block my view.
I am not sure which one was leading the other, but they are definitely on the same orbit and one was chasing the other. Atlantis is currently 10 nautical miles lower than ISS. It was definitely cool to see them. If you are interested in finding out when ISS is flying over your geographic location go to http://heavens-above.com/ and put in your location.
Cool! See photos here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/06/19/iss-and-shuttle-images/
We managed to see them both days. Wednesday was much better, since it was higher in the sky so it was visible longer (and much brighter). I wondered if you knew they’d be visible (I would have dropped you a note, but I didn’t think about this until it had already gone over
).
I should have known. I subscribe to a service that is suppose to send me emails when they are scheduled to fly-over. For some reason I am not getting them. Probably the same stupid filter that is keeping my Weather Channel alerts from arriving daily.