If you haven’t seen a pass of the International Space Station or ISS, you are in for an unforgettable experience.
It is fast, it is large and often incredibly bright and some people can see the solar panels just using their eyes.
If you have a pair of binoculars and pre-focus them on a distant object, you can see the entire station.
When I say that the ISS is large, I am not kidding.
It would just fit within a football stadium.
It is 359 feet long and 239 feet wide counting the solar panels.
It is traveling at nearly 18,000 miles per hour.
It weighs 466 Tons and orbits 250 miles above the earth.
Even 250 miles above you, it is big enough to see the shape with the naked eye.
Enjoy!
The first map shows the times when the International Space Station is in view over Western Massachusetts.
The second map shows the current position of the space station.
Check back often as the track changes daily.
The button below links you to a site that shows multi-day passes of the ISS. If you look at the bar chart next to each pass, it shows you the relative brightness of the passage. You can also get a good idea of the inherent brightness by how close to Westhampton (Lyman Road) the pass is.
This site also tracks the Chinese Space Station Tiangong which is also visible to the naked eye.