If you live in the Southern California area, heads up for the next few evenings, ESPECIALLY TOMORROW.
We’ve gotten to the time of year where the planetary tilt and the orbital plane of the International Space Station (ISS) align and there are a LOT of excellent evening passes coming up.
(Image from Heavens-Above.com)
Tonight we saw a wonderful, bright, high pass that went right through the Big Dipper almost directly overhead and then faded into shadow.
Tomorrow night at 20:55 the ISS will rise in the south-southwest, go high through the sky, get VERY bright, and then disappear over the horizon to the northeast.
(Image from Heavens-Above.com)
There are other evening passes later in the week that will be lovely, just not as high and as bright as Friday’s.
There are also some spectacular passes before sunrise this week, but the odds of me dragging my butt out of bed at 04:15 or the like to see it are very, VERY close to zero. I’m about a thousand hours short of sleep in the last six months, unless the alien mothership is coming in, I’m staying in bed.
As Dirty Harry said, “A man has got to know his limitations!”