Spot the SpaceX Dragon Module and International Space Station Tonight
With an anticipated break in the poor weather recently, tonight is a good chance to catch the International Space Station, home now to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon module.
While the Crew Dragon module is too small to differentiate on its own, the entire assembly of modules that make up the International Space Station is readily visible to the unaided eye, owing to its large surface area of bright surfaces and the large solar panel arrays.
To see it tonight, at 9:22 pm look due West roughly where the sun crosses the horizon at sunset and slowly scan that area for a slow moving white star. The ISS has no colored or flashing lights, be aware that we have a lot of air traffic from the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport which can be easily mistaken for satellites. The ISS will move in a slow, steady sweep on the path shown in the diagram, but it’s not as fast as you’re probably thinking. It takes almost 11 minutes to cross the sky, much slower than meteor streaks for example, and about as bright as the surrounding stars.
See the International Space Station (ISS) June 3, 2020 from Arvada, CO @ 9:22 pm
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