When will we be able to see the ISS? How to see the International Space Station

If you like to watch the night sky, then you will be interested to know that today, as in the coming days, the ISS will be visible over Russia. This was reported on the website of the capital planetarium. The phenomenon is truly unique, because you will not need any equipment to observe. So, you can go out and observe the ISS in the sky today, and so on until July 21.

You can calculate the flight time and trajectory of the International Space Station for your region using the website www.heavens-above.com. To do this, you need to select your location in the panel located in the upper right corner, and then on home page section - “Satellites-ISS”.

Many people dream of seeing the ISS in the sky, but at the same time it is not so difficult to do, reports the Ros-Registr portal. It's important to know where and when to look. Telescopes or binoculars are not needed for observations. The ISS is moving very quickly, and it is extremely difficult to catch it using an optical instrument. But under certain conditions it is visible to the naked eye very well. The brightness of the International Space Station can rival even Jupiter and Venus, and its rapid movement across the sky attracts the attention of observers.

“In Russia, the closest favorable period for visibility of the ISS will occur from July 12 to July 21, 2018. The station will be visible after midnight in most of Russia.
Alexander Perkhnyak, astrophysicist, employee of the Moscow Planetarium: “There are several simple recommendations for those who want to see the ISS flyby. They will help you with this special applications on smartphones, for example ISS Detector or ISS Spotter. During the flight, you just need to look at the sky above the western horizon. The station looks like a bright, fast-moving and non-flickering star, white in color, which can change to reddish-orange as it moves and enters the Earth's shadow. By the way, it is at this moment that the cosmonauts on board will see the sunset,” reports the Moscow Planetarium.

Perhaps this is one of the last opportunities to see the station, because they want to drown it. “The Americans no longer have money for the ISS.” “NASA’s meager budget will be saved, the ISS project is being phased out.” "The US government wants to force NASA to stop supporting the ISS." News channels carried the amendments to the American budget for 2025, which were spotted by one of the journalists, as an absolute sensation.
The subtext of the publications is generally simple: the Americans decide to leave the project, abandoning their partners - Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, the Japanese, the Canadians. Well, then, apparently, they will personally work ahead of the curve - forging their own lunar program.

Several years ago, the countries that created the International Space Station agreed: it will fly until 2024. Well, look, our Mir station flew for 15 years. Or rather, its base unit and other modules were significantly younger. And after 11 years, unpleasant things began to happen in this base unit: for example, liquid leaked from the system that maintained the correct temperature on board. The last crews sent to the station were mostly engaged in its repair. And the Zvezda service module—the brains and brawn of the ISS—is essentially an analogue of the Mir base unit. And he has been flying for almost 18 years. True, fortunately, there are no such problems on it as on the Mir. But by 2024, Zvezda will have been orbiting the Earth for almost a quarter of a century—that’s a lot.

By and large, not only American financiers understand that further operation of the ISS is a waste of money. We have gained experience in constructing significant residential volumes in space: now the mass of the station is almost 450 tons, an entire train. This is important for the construction of a Martian ship in the future (it will also be assembled from modules in orbit). It remains to complete the biological experiments for the same Mars program - it is not yet very clear how to maintain the crews’ performance throughout the entire 500-day flight to the Red Planet and back. The Americans plan to conduct several more important experiments on living people - ten astronauts will work in orbit for a year.

Well, the ISS is needed to test flights of new manned spacecraft - they are currently being developed by both the United States and Russia. These ships will form humanity's fleet, which will fly to the Moon, to the asteroids and to Mars. The remaining six years should be enough for everything.

The main question is what will happen after 2024? And it needs to be answered now.

Humanity cannot stop manned flights. Simply because the loss of experience that is constantly being gained can ultimately cost much more than the savings from discontinuing programs. It’s like an athlete – if he doesn’t train, getting back into shape will be very difficult, sometimes impossible. The Americans had their own orbital station, Skylab (three crews worked on it in 1973-74). And in the 90s, the United States had to cooperate with Russia, create the Mir-NASA program, send its astronauts to our station simply because the experience of long-term flights into orbit was lost and had to be accumulated again.

At the recent Royal Readings at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the General Designer for Manned space systems and RSC Energia complexes, Evgeniy Mikrin described everything clearly. By 2019, the construction of the Russian segment of the ISS should be completed - the multi-purpose laboratory module “Nauka” (it will become the largest module of the station), the hub module “Prichal” and the scientific and energy module (NEM) will be docked to it.

They are designed in such a way that they can be undocked from the ISS at any time and turned into a separate station. A gateway module and a transformable module will be added (its tests are currently underway). The brain of the station will be NEM. In general, the end of operation of the ISS will not be some kind of tragic event for the Russian cosmonautics. We fly further.

Do you want to track the ISS online and be ready in time to observe the station? But how can you find out when the ISS will fly over your house or garden? Here are the best online services for this.

First, NASA has a Quick and Easy Observations site where you simply search for your country and city, which then displays the date, local time, observation duration, and ISS approach data so you don't miss a station in the sky. However, there is one drawback - it is not possible to determine the ISS coordinates online for all countries and cities. For example, only large cities are available for Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Volgograd, Tver, Tula, Samara, Stavropol, Pskov, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Rostov, Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok and other megacities. In other words, if you live in a small town, you can only rely on information for the city closest to you.

Secondly, the Heavens Above website is also an excellent resource for finding out when the ISS, as well as all sorts of other satellites, is passing overhead in your sky. Unlike NASA's site, Heaven Above allows you to enter your exact latitude and longitude. This way, if you live in a remote area, you can get the exact time and location so you can start searching for satellites yourself. The site also offers registration to visitors to enhance its functionality and ease of use.

Third, Spaceweather has its own Satellite page, which provides information to the United States and Canada. But you can also use this link for other countries. Interestingly, you can specify the calculation of coordinates not only for the ISS, but also, for example, for the Hubble telescope or satellites. For countries of the North American continent, you only need to indicate the ZIP code and select the object. For other continents, you select Country - Region/State - Locality. For example, I managed to find the coordinates of satellites and the ISS for Moscow Khimki. However, this site is often overloaded, since it is very popular among observation enthusiasts.

There is also this very cool monitoring of the ISS movement from Google. You cannot specify data for calculating the time and coordinates of the ISS location, but you have the opportunity to monitor the movement of the station online.

The flight trajectory of the International Space Station can also be tracked in real time on a special page of the official website Russian Center Space Flight Control (this will require the Java(TM) plugin to be installed). In addition to the flight route, you can learn about the orientation of the International Space Station, look into the ISS flight archive and much more.

Additionally, you can be notified on Twitter when the space station passes overhead. To do this, use

Watch the flight of the International Space Station from the surface of the Earth. See the table with the dates and times of the visible passage of the ISS over the observation site. This is no less exciting than following the trajectory of the Station on the world map.

Visibility conditions of the ISS from Earth

As you know, sunrise on a satellite occurs earlier than on Earth, and sunset occurs later. This is what makes it possible to observe the station’s flight in the starry sky for some time before dawn and after sunset from the surface of the Earth.

Visible flight in the central regions of Russia is a rather rare phenomenon, including due to weather conditions, which makes it all the more interesting to catch this moment. The best time for visual observation of the ISS is summer, when the earth faces the sun with the northern hemisphere and the Station does not go into the Earth's shadow for more time after sunset and before dawn.

In summer, you can observe several passages of the ISS in one night. However, even in winter you can see up to two spans of the Station in one night.

To visually monitor the flight of an international satellite from Earth, three conditions must be met:

Clear night sky.
Passage of the ISS orbit over the observation point.
The station has not yet entered the shadow of the planet.

Weather conditions do not depend on us, and the date and time of the ISS’s flight over the observation site will be determined from the table on the Heavens Above website. Please use this link if you do not see the Heavens Above website embed below.

Determining the date and time of observation

The algorithm of the Heavens Above website builds a forecast of the Station's flight over the observation location using the entered coordinates. You don't need to remember them: the coordinates will be set automatically after selecting your locality or another point on the built-in world map.

Determining the date and time of observation of the ISS flight from Earth:

Use the scroll bars to move to the rectangle in the upper right corner. Select Russian if it is not automatically applied and click on the link Unspecified or to the coordinates in brackets.
Clicking on the link will open an embedded world map. Enlarge it by clicking on the “+” icon or scrolling while holding down the “Ctrl” key.
Find your observation location for the ISS on the Earth map, click on it (it will be marked with a beacon) and click the “Apply” button.
Your coordinates will be entered automatically. You will see them in the same rectangle at the top right.
Next, on the left in the “Satellites” section, click on the “ISS” link and, if there is no table with dates and times of flight of the Station for the specified period, use the arrows to change the date interval until the table is displayed.

On days when the International Space Station is available for visual observation, go out to observe it at the time indicated in the table.

When looking for a Station in the starry sky, you will not miss it - it will appear as the brightest or almost the brightest point, moving among the stars in the west or southwest and will move in an easterly direction. Its brightness is due to the rather large size of the ISS and, accordingly, a large surface that reflects sunlight.

If you look closely at the clear night sky, you can almost always see a luminous point of the satellite slowly moving among the numerous stars that are motionless to the eye. Just take a closer look at certain parts of the sky after sunset and nightfall on Earth.

Watch the American segment of the ISS. The Earth through the eyes of astronauts using two video players at once.

Many people believe that the International Space Station (ISS) flies somewhere very far away, and in order to see it (let alone photograph it) you need special equipment. However, this is not at all true. The ISS flies over our heads several times every day, and seeing it is no more difficult than an ordinary passenger plane. You just need to know when and where to look. The brightness of the ISS can compete even with Jupiter and Venus, and its rapid movement across the sky attracts attention even more. In this article I want to tell you how and when you can see the ISS tonight in Moscow, I’ll tell you how to find out the time of passage of the ISS for any other place and date, and also touch on the topic of photo and video shooting of the ISS.

What will be needed for observations?

No telescopes or binoculars will help us; they will even harm us. The fact is that the ISS is moving very quickly, and it is difficult to catch and track it with an optical instrument with high magnification. This gif gives some idea of her speed.

And we will need clear skies (everything is in order tonight):

...and an open area with good review to the southwest, south and southeast (for example, a supermarket parking lot, a sports ground, the roof of a building, etc.). The proximity of bright lights will not hurt us, since the ISS is a very bright object. If you are too lazy to go outside, you can get by with a balcony or window facing south.

You also need a watch synchronized with precise time, and a compass (in case you do not know at least the approximate directions to the cardinal points at the chosen point for observations).

When and where to look?

The ISS completes one orbit in about an hour and a half. This means that if the Earth did not rotate, we would see the ISS flying along the same trajectory every hour and a half. Since the Earth still rotates, the “footprint” from the ISS on the Earth’s surface shifts to the west with each revolution. In addition, the ISS is visible only when it itself is illuminated by the Sun, while it is already dark at the observer’s location (you can manage it, but it’s more difficult). To calculate today's visible ISS flights over Moscow, I used the online service heavens-above.com (residents of other cities can easily get the ISS visibility conditions there themselves). The most favorable passage for observations is expected today at approximately 22:47.

The stars on the map won't help us much since they are hard to see in the city. It’s easier to navigate the cardinal directions using a compass. If you don’t have a compass, look for the direction where the evening dawn is burning, it will be northwest.

The ISS will ascend at 22:42:30 , but it’s too early to start looking for it at this time. At the very horizon it is still not bright enough, and trees, buildings and haze may interfere with the view. It is better to wait until it rises at least 10 degrees above the horizon. This will happen in 22:44:38 , the ISS will be somewhere between the west and southwest. You will notice a dim, non-flickering star that is slowly moving to the left and up. This star is the ISS flying somewhere over France at a distance of one and a half thousand kilometers. Do not rush to be upset if you were unable to notice it at this moment - light clouds on the horizon could have interfered with you, or you yourself were a little miscalculated with the direction. The star will move faster, glow brighter, and within a minute it will be much easier to find it. The station will reach a maximum altitude of 40 degrees in 22:47:43 , being almost to the south in azimuth. At this moment, the ISS will be just below the star Altair, comparable in brightness to Venus, and in angular speed - with a jet plane. The distance to it will be about 600 km. Then the ISS will descend, moving to the east, and in 22:48:52 will enter the shadow of the Earth. Due to the presence of the atmosphere, the brightness of the station will not drop instantly. It will gradually fade away over ten seconds. Particularly attentive observers will notice that the ISS will turn red before going dark. After all, at this moment the astronauts on board will see the sun setting, and at sunset the sun's rays turn red. When the station is finally out of sight, look to the east and as a bonus, you'll see the moon rising.

Note: The above times will be correct to the second for an observer on Red Square. If you are far from the center, there will be differences of a few seconds. For example, in Reutov, the maximum height will be reached 2 seconds later. Entry into the shadow will, of course, occur simultaneously for all observers.

Another less convenient passage for observations will occur one orbit earlier, at 21:11 . You can try to observe it first, but at 9 pm it is still quite light and the ISS will be difficult to see against the light sky. In addition, the station will rise only 28 degrees.

How to take a photo or video of the ISS?

If you are going to observe the ISS for the first time, then I recommend not to be distracted by the photo yet. Better look with your eyes, get an idea of the brightness and speed. Next time, for example tomorrow, you can go out with a camera. Set the long exposure to 10-30 seconds. Adjust the aperture and sensitivity so as not to overexpose the sky, but at the same time so that the stars are visible. Mount the camera on a tripod and point it at the part of the sky where the flight is expected. A few minutes earlier, you can take a test shot to, using the stars, make sure that the desired area of the sky is included in the frame. As a result, you can get a frame like this (the photo is not mine, I found it on Google Images).

If you expect to fly near the Moon, you can catch an interesting shot. For example, this is what I got:

In dynamics it looked like this (shot on a Panasonic HDC-SD90 compact video camera).

What about the transits of the Moon and the Sun shown at the beginning of the article?

Recently, news portals circulated the news that NASA published unique photographs of the ISS against the backdrop of the Moon. Even on Giktimes about this. In fact, there is nothing unusual in that photo, you can verify this by searching for keywords " iss transit" in Google Images. On the first try, I managed to take similar photos and videos with fairly modest equipment (the same as what I used in the article):

It's best to watch the video in full screen mode:

The main problem here is that the shadow (or rather penumbra) cast by the ISS from the Sun or Moon is only a few kilometers in size. In a randomly chosen place, such a phenomenon happens extremely rarely, so you will have to wait for the right moment, get into a car and drive several tens of kilometers. To find out when and where to go, you can use the calsky.com service. There you can get a map showing where the shadow of the ISS will pass in the next couple of days. Here, for example, is a fragment of a map of the nearest transits on the Moon.