This is a good week to show the kids a spaceship
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Ottawa is entering a long period that will provide the chance to see six astronauts fly overhead, and you won’t have to stay up late or go out in cold weather to watch.
Every evening for the next two weeks the International Space Station will be visible over Ottawa in the early or mid-evening. Times range mostly from 7 to 8:45 p.m., and some passes will be more directly overhead than others, so some views will last longer.
The maximum will be about six minutes.
The station looks like a bright white star moving silently in a generally west-to-east direction. It’s much faster than a high-flying airplane and has no flashing lights because they aren’t worried about traffic that high.
It’s moving at 28,000 km/h. In Earth’s atmosphere, that would translate to Mach 25.
When its orbit takes the station over a point on Earth before sunrise or after sunset, it’s visible because we are in darkness while it’s still in bright sunshine 400 kilometres overhead.
Summer viewing can be too late at night to show your children space travel in action. Winter viewing means standing in the cold. Spring and fall are the most convenient times to see the station.
Aboard today are Scott Kelly, Sergey Volkov, Mikhail Kornienko, Kjell Lindgren, Oleg Kononenko and Kimiya Yui. Kelly and Kornienko are halfway through a one-year stay aboard the station as both NASA and the Russian Space Agency study the long-term effects of space flight. After all, Mars is a long way from Earth.
Sunday night, the station will approach from low in the south, moving toward the eastern sky beginning at 7:24 p.m., but it won’t rise very high in the sky.
There should be good views on Monday and Tuesday, weather permitting. Monday it appears at 8:07 p.m. from the southwest and crosses the sky very high, remaining in sight for four minutes. Tuesday is a six-minute trip from the southwest to the east-northeast, starting at 7:15 p.m.
All viewing times, by city, can be found here: http://go.nasa.gov/1M2VfPp.
But here’s a hint: The station sometimes comes into view a minute or so after the schedule says it will, so be patient.
The station has been in orbit for 6,162 days.
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