{"id":84,"date":"2008-08-07T21:14:15","date_gmt":"2008-08-08T04:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=84"},"modified":"2008-08-07T21:14:15","modified_gmt":"2008-08-08T04:14:15","slug":"the-international-space-station-and-my-naked-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=84","title":{"rendered":"The International Space Station and my Naked Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw the International Space Station with my own eyes for the first time today. It crossed over Los Angeles from about 8:52 p.m. to 8:57 p.m. (You can get a list of upcoming local flybys<\/a> based on your zip code.) It was bright: magnitude -3.0, according to that website (“magnitude” of sky objects is inversely proportional to brightness). I watched it sail overhead, from the northwest towards the southeast. It was a solid light, moving so quickly that you might mistake it for an airplane, but then it became obvious that this was no low-altitude craft. <\/p>\n

It was nearing Jupiter (within about 8 degrees by my estimate) and I was comparing their brightness. At first, I was sure it was brighter than Jupiter (which, my StarPilot software claims, is -2.6 magnitude, so that checks out). But then it started to get dimmer. I blinked, but I wasn’t imagining it. It got dimmer and then began to turn red<\/i>, and as I watched, it entirely vanished! <\/p>\n

Some quick geometric reasoning suggested that I did not just witness the fiery demise of the ISS. Instead, it must have crossed into the Earth’s shadow while I was watching. Given the time of day and the relative position of Sun, Earth, and ISS, that makes sense. The red color I would not have known whether to expect to see visually, but presumably it’s the same effect we see at sunsets: low-angle sunlight must cross through more atmosphere, absorbing more of the shorter-wavelength colors, and at the limit, red will preferentially shine through due to refraction even as the Sun is partly occluded. So the light I was seeing definitely wasn’t coming from some airplane’s headlight; it was reflected sunshine! <\/p>\n

And not only did I see the ISS, but I witnessed an ISS eclipse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw the International Space Station with my own eyes for the first time today. It crossed over Los Angeles from about 8:52 p.m. to 8:57 p.m. (You can get a list of upcoming local flybys based on your zip code.) It was bright: magnitude -3.0, according to that website (“magnitude” of sky objects is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}