Groundspeak Portal

Next weekend (Sat., Oct 6) There is a great pass of the International Space Station in my area (Central Wisconsin).  Anyone interested in doing a Space Station catch?

According to the Heavens Above web site, the station will make a four minute pass as follows (all times in CST):
19:40:54    Garden City, KS
19:41:19    Hays, KS
19:42:05   Lincoln, NE
19:42:39   Des Moines, IA
19:43:00   Waterloo, IA
19:43:17   Prairie du Chien, WI
19:43:34   Baraboo, WI
19:43:52   Appleton, WI
19:44:08   Sturgeon Bay, WI
19:44:39   St. Ignace, MI
19:45:00   Sudbury, Canada

If you are within 45-60 miles of these cities, you should be able to get a good view of it.

I might be able to do this with you. From what I can tell, I'll be able to see the ISS just after 7pm on October 6th. I'm in the Eastern Time zone (New Hampshire).

I'm not that familiar with the category, so I'll have to check to see how this works. But I've watch the space station fly overhead on numerous occassions.

cache_test_dummies:

I might be able to do this with you. From what I can tell, I'll be able to see the ISS just after 7pm on October 6th. I'm in the Eastern Time zone (New Hampshire).

I'm not that familiar with the category, so I'll have to check to see how this works. But I've watch the space station fly overhead on numerous occassions.

cache_test_dummies,
If I'm reading the category correctly, you need to see the same pass that I do.  And the pass that I am talking about would not be visible from New Hampshire.  And the pass you are talking about will not be visible from Wisconsin.
Maybe you can find some folks to see your pass as well?

I finally saw the space station for the first time last night. It was pretty impressive.

im in FL, someone help me with this one....

chapterhouseinc:

im in FL, someone help me with this one....

The instructions on the waymark category seem a little complicated.

I follow @Twisst on twitter, and whenever the space station is going to be visable near me I get a tweet

The way I understand the waymark cat is you find a time when the space station going to be visable to you. You find someone else who has it visable at that same time, but they have to be a large distance from you. You both look at the same time, and if you both see it you can log a waymark. If only one person sees it, they log a waymark.

I'm going to be driving to Iowa tonight. Maybe I'll try to figure when it will be visable on my route, and log it with a geocaching friend back home. It's going to pass Ann Arbor at 11:22, so probably Iowa at 10ish?

yes, i feel that the red tape to log a visit is just as thick as posting a mark in this category....

gt.us:

It's going to pass Ann Arbor at 11:22, so probably Iowa at 10ish?

The thing travel at something like 25,000 miles an hour so the difference is mere minutes on a particular pass.

I live so near the West Coast this one is almost impossible for me to get because of the limitations of degrees above the horizon and distance.  Passes visible to me are often not seen in locations east of me because of darkness and the pass is often not high enough for me to enlist waymarkers from the north and south. I am still hoping though.

edit to add: "The station is maintained at an orbit between 278 km (173 mi) and 460 km (286 mi) altitude, and travels at an average speed of 27,724 km/h (17,227 mph), completing 15.7 orbits per day." Wikipedia

To Cache_Test_Dummies:  Hey, I'm in your area!  If you're interested, we can arrange a time to see the station passing.

I'll have to look at the requirements myself, as I've been putting off logging that category.

Ok - I'm in!

I have a question for Space Station knowledgeable people.

My tweet said the Space Station will be bright and passing Ann Arbor at 5:24 AM tomorrow from NW.

Victor is flying home from San Fran tonight, landing in Detroit around 6ish.

So, at about 5:24AM he will be between Chicago and Detroit. What would be the time offset for 2-3 degrees longitude? I am thinking he would have a great view out the plane window if the plane is headed ENE, to view somthing coming from the NW.

But I'm no rocket scientists, so is there something I'm missing?

Let's see ... Victor is in a plane, heading east north east at 400 miles per hour. The Space Station is in space, heading south east at 17,000 miles per hour ...

I tried to do this in my head but I gave up.

I started with how far he is West of Ann Arbor. So assuming he is 400 miles WSW at an 45 degree angle, I would say the C squared = 400 squared or 160000. then the A squared plus b squared would have to equal 160000. A squared would be how far south, and B squared would be how far west. Since its 45 degrees B squared would be 2 time A Squared.

So A * A + 2A * 2A = 160000

Then A * A + 4* A *A = 160000

Then I'm stuck would the next step be 5*A*A = 160000
and A*A = 32000

then the sqrt = 178 so 178 miles south and 356 miles west?

Okay next is figuring how long it takes the satellite to go 356 miles west at 17000 miles per hour. Which would be somthing like .02 of an hour which would be 1 minute and twenty seconds? Or somthing like that?

I've really been trying to figure this out, but I've come to the conclusion that I can't. At least not in a mathematical sense.

But in a more practical sense, I think the answer is that it might have been possible to see the space station while sitting in a window seat on the port side of an airplane moving ENE across southern Michigan  / northern Indiana at 5:25 this morning. But the space station would have been visible for only about a minute, moving quickly, about 20 degrees above the horizon, to the north or north west.

And only then if there was no sunlight at all at that time of the morning. Here on the east coast the sky has already started to lighten by that time of the morning this time of the year, but I know that Michigan, while still in the East Coast Time Zone, is a bit darker in the morning than we are, due to being further west.

If the flight was tomorrow morning, this whole event would be occurring about 20 minutes later in the morning, but the Space Station would be visible for 3 minutes, and be about 40 degrees above the north or northwest horizon.