See the space station. The ISS in the skies over Russia has become visible to the naked eye

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 most best time for visual observation of the ISS, this is summer, when the earth is turned towards the sun by the northern hemisphere and the Station does not go into the shadow of the Earth 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.

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 above 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. Special applications on smartphones, for example ISS Detector or ISS Spotter, will help you with this. 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 repairs. 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 the 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.

Interesting to a recent post:

when I was watching the eclipse, I also saw a bright object flying high from west to east, quite bright compared to stars. revised the approximate time, magnitude and direction according to the Stellarium program. it turned out that it was the ISS)

I have always been surprised by statements that the ISS and other satellites declared by officials are visible from Earth with the naked eye. Let's try to figure it out.

The ISS orbit is declared at an altitude of 408 km.
Max. The dimensions of the station are stated to be 109 meters (including deployed batteries). This is approximately 4 carriages of a passenger train or 7 trucks (20-ton, Euro-trucks).
And as far as I know, the ISS is the largest orbital object (of our civilization).

Now remember the view from the airplane window during the flight.
Do you remember? Were the trucks or trains below clearly visible?
And this is only 10 km altitude...

To check, consider this thing:

Here are 2 islands on Lake Chapala in Mexico.

I chose them for two reasons:

1. On the surface of the water, the island is better visible than any other artifact on the ground, which is all built up and objects mix into mush at a distance (you can, of course, look for farms solar panels in the desert for maximum clarity, but laziness. If you find it, please let me know)

2. One of the islands is clearly visible from a height; it can be used as a landmark

We pay attention to the small island. Its dimensions are 2.5 times larger than the ISS (~260 by 100 m) and it is clearly visible from a height of 5.44 km, like the large one nearby:

And now we rise to an altitude of 400 km:

Do you see such a small dot there right between the tip of the arrow and the letter P?

This big the island and it is barely visible. The little one disappeared completely.

Watched it on normal Google Earth with a screen resolution of 1920x1080. You can try it yourself.

It is clear that the ISS and its mirror arrays can glow, but is this light enough to be visible from Earth?

Other satellites, as far as I know, do not at all exceed the size of machines with orbits of at least 200 km, and this is for spy vehicles, which obviously will not be entered into civilian databases.

If such arguments seem insufficient to you, remember that 400 km is the distance from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod.

And try to see not even a single building, but the entire city from such a distance)

Or just look at the Earth in reverse order, preferably in full screen:

Earth from space in 4k. ISS flights over the continents of the Earth, the latest images. VITA mission. ESA 2018

At the 1:45 mark, Geneva's Lake Leman is visible.

The arrow marks the Geneva Cointrin airport; against the general background of the city, it can also be used as a landmark:

This is what it looks like in full screen with 4K video quality:

The length of the runway is ~4 km, the width including the lawns is ~400 m, but even it is almost invisible from a height of 400 km!

So is it possible to see the ISS from this distance, do you think?

And bonus questions from our quiz:

Who or what is taking all these masterpiece pictures of the ISS from a couple of hundred meters, a quadcopter, a satellite, a kamikaze paparazzi?

Why don't you ever see the stars in them unless it's obviously photoshopped CGI?

ALL videos of the astronauts going into space were filmed from on board, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE VIDEO filmed from the side, only graphics! Can you explain this?

And why not record the eclipses that are so interesting to everyone on the ISS cameras, since NASA and other agencies constantly broadcast them from Earth? ;)

UPD from comments:

This is what the ISS altitude of 400 km looks like compared to the planet.

What lights it up from below, the city lights? because the sun can only do this for a VERY short period

Is it possible from this height to see such a refraction of the surface, as they show us, i.e. almost a quarter of the planet, and sometimes more?

The International Space Station orbits hundreds of miles above the Earth, and astronauts from different countries. The space station can always be seen when it moves over the place where you are at the moment. This article presents simple steps, following which you can catch a glimpse of this stunning structure.

Steps

Part 1

Choose the right time

1. Research the International Space Station schedule to find out exactly when it will be moving into your area. To do this, you can use the links provided below, or write in the search bar the query “international space station schedule”. These charts contain information to help you determine the appropriate time. Select a site where you can enter your address, city, postal code; If you enter incorrect data, the information displayed may also be incorrect.

   • Check out the charts on Heavens Above, NASA, or SpaceWeather.
   • Some sites themselves determine the location based on the data from the nearest server of your provider. This data is not always correct, so double-check the name of the city or town, or choose another site.
   • Some sites use the abbreviation ISS.

2. Find a time when the station is visible for several minutes. Sometimes, depending on your area, it will only be visible for a few seconds. And sometimes - two minutes or more. Find the time when the station is visible the longest so you can take a closer look at it. Write down the time.

   • The station is easiest to see at night during the few hours between sunset and dawn. Below you will find out when the station will be best visible during the day.
   • Some graphs present station spawn times in their own order, while others will require you to figure out the times yourself by calculating the start time from the end time. Time is usually written in the format hour:minute:second. Check whether the site uses 24 or 12 hour format.

3. Using the graph, determine those periods of time when the station is best visible. Most graphs indicate "brightness" or "magnitude"; If you don't find it on one site, you can turn to another. The brightness scale may seem strange to you, because on it a negative number, for example -4, indicates greater brightness than, for example, +3! The website provides recommendations that will help you figure out which values ​​on the brightness scale indicate good visibility of the station:

   • Values ​​ranging from -4 to -2 indicate the best visibility; in this case, the station can be seen even during the day.
   • A value between -2 and +4 usually indicates good visibility, but strong street lighting may be a hindrance.
   • Values ​​between +4 and +6 indicate poor visibility. If the sky is clear and there is no interference from street lighting, you may be able to see the station. In this case, you will need binoculars.
   • To get a rough idea of ​​the "brightness" of the station, compare the value with the following values: the sun during the day has a magnitude of about -26.7, the moon -12.5, and Venus - the brightest planet - -4.4.

4. Check the weather forecast. Once you find a time when the station will be clearly visible for a long time, check what weather is expected that day. Try to find an hourly forecast if possible to make sure you won't be affected by clouds while viewing. Forecasts presented earlier than a day in advance are always incorrect, so check the forecast again 24 hours before the station becomes visible.

   Part 2

   Find a station in the sky

   1. Determine the location of the space station using the graph. Use the graph you found in the last section. The section should be titled "where to look", "appearance", "azimuth" or "AZ". Study the contents of this section to determine exactly where in the sky the satellite will be visible.

      • Depending on the letter indicated in the section, look north, south, west or east. The chart can provide you with more detailed directional information. For example, northwest means the direction between north and west.
      • If you're unsure about how to find your bearings, read this article on how to use a compass.

   2. Find out how high to look. The graph should include a section called "altitude" with the numbers listed below as "degrees" (or the degree symbol - º). Astronomers typically divide the sky into many small segments called degrees, which help locate objects in the sky. A value of 0º is the horizon line, 90º is perpendicular to the ground, and 45º is exactly halfway between 0º and 90º. To find approximate positions between these values, extend your arm in front of you and make a fist with your palm. The distance between the horizon and the fist will be approximately 10º. If you need, for example, 20º, place your fist directly above the horizon line and place the fist of your other hand on top. Upper part the second fist will point to 20º. Continue changing the position of your fists to find a position that suits you.

      • It may seem strange that the station appears right in the middle of the sky, and not from beyond the horizon. This is because the station becomes visible only when the sun's rays reflect from it. When the station emerges from the shadow of the ground, it immediately becomes visible. The station is difficult to see during sunset or dawn until it rises higher from the bright sunlight.

   3. Find the space station from this location. Based on the time information on the graph and the altitude and direction values ​​from the previous steps, find a station in the sky. It usually appears as a moving dot or a small white and yellow ball. The station doesn't shine or sparkle with light, but if you're lucky, it can become a little brighter for just a second if sunlight reflects off its surface.

      • The station does not shimmer in different colors.
      • The station does not leave a mark on the sky like an airplane.

   4. Use binoculars only when necessary. It will improve the perception of objects. Fifty millimeter binoculars will help you see brightness up to +10 on the scale discussed earlier. However, using only binoculars to find a station in the sky will be quite difficult, since not the entire sky is visible through binoculars. It's best to find the station without using binoculars, then simply hold the binoculars up to your eyes when you find it.

      • Using a telescope, you can find even very inconspicuous objects in the sky, but finding a space station is almost impossible, but this can be done if you accurately measure the direction of the telescope. Use it in the same way as binoculars, but if you are not exactly sure how to use the telescope correctly, then in this case choose a time when the station will be visible for several minutes.

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 don’t 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 passages of the ISS 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 can 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 to occur. 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 keywords "iss transit" on 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.

Conclusion

I hope that thanks to this article, many readers will go outside tonight and look at the sky. I invite you to share your impressions in the comments!