The sky this month
Observing the International Space Station
The transits of the International Space Station (ISS) visible from Trieste are reported below. Data refer to the next 10 days, in order to see transits for the following days move forward with the right arrow.
The ISS is easy to identify because it looks like a very bright object, brighter than most stars, moving along a straight line through the stars and crossing the celestial sphere in 3 or 4 minutes. ISS brightness depends on its position with respect to the Sun, and so on the amount of reflected light: during the brightest transits the ISS is brighter than Jupiter and Venus.
How to read the data: first column of the table (Date) is the date of the transit, the second column (Brightness) is the ISS brightness. Pay attention: the ISS, as all celestial objects, is brigther when it has a lower value of magnitude: a transit with magnitude -1 is brighter than a transit with magnitude +1! The columns three, four and five are respectively data of start, highest point above the local horizon and end of each transit. Data of each column are the time, the altitude above the local horizon(Alt.) and the direction (Az).
