ISS Touched Star

[Mandy D]

Just watched the 23:07 passage of the ISS from North Derbyshire. It grazed a bright star in my SSE and near max elevation. Rather cool to see.

[OK Apricot]

Could have been Vega? I saw it as well, particularly bright over Northampton! 

[Laurieast]

Using Stellarium it was Altair. 

 

Edited July 15, 2022 by Laurieast

[Mandy D]

49 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

Using Stellarium it was Altair.

Yes, definitely Altair - Beta Aquilae was to the west of it. Thanks for confirming this. I spent ages on Stellarium trying to get the ISS in my sky at that time, but my location was bizarrely in the Middle East! Very dodgy. It is now back where it belongs, somewhere on the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District, between Derby and Sheffield, so not a huge distance from you. Great to know we could both see the same thing.

[robin_astro]

Now there's an interesting challenge, to observe an occultation of a star by the ISS. I wonder how narrow the path would be ?  I did catch a Jupiter transit quite a while back though when the data to be able to predict  this sort of thing were not so widely available (and the ISS was quite a bit smaller)

http://www.threehillsobservatory.co.uk/astro/astro2_image_67.htm

Cheers

Robin

[Mandy D]

38 minutes ago, robin_astro said:

Now there's an interesting challenge, to observe an occultation of a star by the ISS. I wonder how narrow the path would be ?  I did catch a Jupiter transit quite a while back though when the data to be able to predict  this sort of thing were not so widely available (and the ISS was quite a bit smaller)

http://www.threehillsobservatory.co.uk/astro/astro2_image_67.htm

Cheers

Robin

Your capture is impressive. This near-occultation of Altair was seen from Northampton and North Derbyshire. Given how close the ISS is to us, I think the path would be quite narrow.