Why didn't i see the ISS ?

[ananthvyas]

Today at around 5:22 AM, stellarium indicated to me that the ISS was to fly above the mumbai skies. The sky was everything one could hope for. Clear, not a single cloud, and good transparency. But while i could see stellarium showing the ISS right between the moon and betelgeuse, i just couldn't spot it. And the ISS is supposed to be brighter than venus/jupiter right? So what could have gone wrong? Are there other factors that play a role?

[Photosbykev]

The ISS is only bright if it is lit by the Sun over the horizon so it's possible that the ISS was in the shadow of the earth when you expected to see it so it wouldn't be seen. Heavens-above or Calsky are the sites to use to check for the visible passes at your location

[Helen]

The ISS moves quickly. Its very bright. Try putting your coordinates into this site http://www.heavens-above.com/?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=CET and it will give you rise and set times and directions.

Its very nice to see and don't forget to wave to them

Helen

[Adrian Condon]

Hi,

There is a program that calculates the position of the ISS. ISS is currently (thursday 8 November 2012 16:00 GMT) to the North of Antarica.

It is very bright and moves quite quickly over the sky.

To see the predicted times try

heavens-above.com

We hope to see it next week at about 19:00 over south west Scotland while we attend the Galloway 4 star party.

If you have problems with the above site please contact us.

Cheers

Adrian

[ananthvyas]

Well i didn't see heavens-above, but i saw it in this link : http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/view.cgi?country=India&region=None&city=Mumbai#.UJvY2Xbqe6c .. and it listed it as a sighting opportunity ... But in general, does stellarium have a way of letting me know whether the sighting is visible or not? and i din get a alert from spotthestation, so i'm guessing it was not a good sighting opportunity then... Ana ya i better stick to heavens-above, many seem to recommend it...

[Photosbykev]

Heavens above is the way to check, all stellarium is giving you is the track of the ISS

[ronin]

According to heavens-above you didn't have a visible pass of the ISS on the 8-Nov at around 5:20.

You do have one tomorrow at 5:37AM November 9th.

There were 3 non-visible passes on Nov 8th at:

6:25, 8:04 and 16:16 but noting, visible or not, at 5:22.

Used 19N and 73E as Lat/Long for Mumbai

The Nov 9 pass is 4 minutes duration, starts in the SSE and travels to the East, it doesn't get very high so you would need a fairly low horizon to the South and East.

[MorningMajor]

You can also get email reminders from NASA by going here

[Redpaul]

There are also loads of IOS and Android apps that do the job.

Paul

[StarlightKnight]

I agree that Heavens Above is best and use it all the time - but provided you have Stellarium set up to download updates and you have your location and time correct if you click on the ISS icon as it moves across the sky it will tell you when it is visible or when it is eclipsed.

Don

[Liofa]

I find SkySafari Pro works well for the ISS, as long as you go into Settings>Solar System>Update Minor Body Orbit Data.

It will also tell you if the ISS will become eclipsed; meaning it moves into the earths shadow and disappears. I've watched it as it fades out high in the sky. Pretty neat.