Spotting International Space Station

I'm pretty sure quite a lot of us have seen moving stars. No these are not shooting stars, these are much slower and are reasonably bright. These are man-made satellites.

Thanks to a tip-off from my dad (he's an avid reader of a local science magazine), I knew for a while that the International Space Station (ISS) is visible to naked eye just like a satellite. Only thing you need to know is where and when. Guess what? NASA has a whole service dedicated to spotting the station at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html. You can go to http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ to subscribe for an email alert service or use Station Sightings link (direct link at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/SSapplications/Post/JavaSSOP/JavaSSOP.html) to get a list of dates and times when the ISS flyby will be visible above your city.

After a bit of a wait, managed to capture it on my camera. Come to think of it, I think its been about 6-9 months since I first heard of this and actually caught it on camera. :)

So here comes the photos anyway:

ISS trail across Centaurus - 270 second exposure

ISS trail across Scorpius - 15 second exposure

The long streaks you see in the photos (towards top right in the photo with Centaurus and in the middle of photo with Scorpius) show the movement of the ISS with respect to the background.

To be honest, it is nothing much, its just a moving star. But to see the largest earth-orbiting object with your naked eye is something. But if you are interested in spotting the ISS your self, here are the next sightings for the week (courtesy of NASA, generated using the links provided above):

NASA SKYWATCH SKYLOG OUTPUT
***** Colombo,-Sri-Lanka *****
Satellite	Local Date/Time	Pass	Max Elev	Approach	Departure
			(Deg)	(Deg-Dir)	(Deg-Dir)
ISS	Sun-Mar-10,13@05:14	05m00s	63	18-above-SSW	10-above-NE
ISS	Mon-Mar-11,13@04:27	00m20s	18	18-above-E	18-above-E
ISS	Mon-Mar-11,13@06:01	02m00s	10	10-above-WNW	10-above-NW
ISS	Tue-Mar-12,13@05:12	02m00s	19	19-above-NNW	10-above-N
ISS	Sun-Mar-10,13@05:14	05m00s	63	18-above-SSW	10-above-NE
ISS	Mon-Mar-11,13@04:27	00m20s	18	18-above-E	18-above-E
ISS	Mon-Mar-11,13@06:01	02m00s	10	10-above-WNW	10-above-NW
ISS	Tue-Mar-12,13@05:12	02m00s	19	19-above-NNW	10-above-N

P:S:
In case you are wondering whether we could spot the communication satellite SupremeSAT -1, the first satellite owned by Sri Lanka and launched by China, the answer is possibly yes. Will try to catch that too.