Nice ISS Pass Tonight in Adelaide (Monday 1st February 2010)

[DJ N]

After seeing the ISS fairly bright Thursday night and Saturday nights, totally by fluke, I have checked 'Heavens Above', and we have another bright pass this evening........ will not be dark yet but should still see it quite easily. The details are as follows........

Monday 1st February ==> Mag -2.7

Start : 20:44:19 at 10 degrees Alt WNW
Max Alt : 20:47:10 at 60 degrees SW
Ends : 20:50:03 at 10 degrees Alt SE

Will have to record Bear Grylls tonight and be out there watching!!

Cheers!

[rally]

Thanks Daniel for the Heads Up

Thought I might try to have a look at it tonightand see if I can track it.

So I have just tried to enter the Two Line Orbital Element for the IIS into TheSky6 for some practice fun tonight.

But . . . its not working very well.

I have tried both the Heavens Above data
http://www.heavens-above.com/orbitdi...sp?satid=25544

and the Celestrak data from the linked page
http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/

Essentially its the same data - one site has a leading Zero on "Inclination" field - 051.6433

I am using this data
ISS (ZARYA)
1 25544U 98067A 10031.90675177 .00011404 00000-0 77170-4 0 4897
2 25544 051.6433 210.4798 0010870 266.6561 240.0872 15.75537100642002

I load it from a text file as per normal and it parses the data OK and TheSky6 computes the orbits.

Only problem is the displayed orbit is not correct - its going well under the horizon from another direction !
The orbit is nothing like Stellarium displays it - which corresponds quite well to the Heavens Above site for my location, start, finish and max alt times
I have checked one hour behind and ahead and likewise for one day behind and ahead just in case for possible daylight saving or time zone and date issues but nothing seems to work.

I deleted it and tried a new entry with a different name just to make sure there wasnt more than one entry or if TheSky was not taking my new Orbit data - all to no avail - same result with the "new" object.

Just wondering if anyone can suggest what I might possibly be doing wrong ?

Thanks in advance !

Rally

[richardda1st (Richard)]

Last saturday, just before 10:04, I set up my dob as per Stellarium using a 26mm 70deg ep, and waited. To my delight, the ISS raced accross my view, which I then roughly tracked. A bit of fun.

Strange that with Stellarium it's somtimes spot on and at other times no where near it. I have compared Stellarium with the NASA's sighting info and find that they do not always agree, so now I always use the NASA info.

Cheers
Richard