But camera-wielding astronauts are not the only ones looking down at Earth from their perch in the sky. Credit: NASAĪfter 20 years of continuous human presence, the International Space Station (ISS) has provided 241 visitors with an extraordinary view of Earth from outer space - one they have shared with the rest of the world.Īstronaut photography, formally called Crew Earth Observations (CEO), has resulted in more than 3.5 million photographs of the ever-changing blue planet. (They accomplished the first all-female spacewalk last October.The International Space Station has been continuously occupied for two decades, and the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard have taken more than 3.5 million photographs of our home planet from space.
Day – replaced some batteries on the craft, and thereby completed history’s third-ever all-woman spacewalk. The craft is traveling at 17,100 miles per hour, but appears to move slowly because of its distance from Earth.Īboard the space station are NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch, who on Monday – Martin Luther King Jr. After a few minutes, as it glides toward the northeast, it will pass into the shadow of the Earth and quickly fade from view. Then, a minute or two after 6:35, if the sky is reasonably clear of clouds, you will see the space station appear like a particularly bright star moving fairly slowly upward across the sky. Murphy recommends that space station-gazers go outside this evening a few minutes before the pass to allow time for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications) UVA astronomer Ed Murphy said the space station will appear like a particularly bright star moving slowly upward across the sky. Those next passes will occur in early February. A few weeks later, it passes over again, traveling northwest to southeast.
Murphy said the space station’s orbit is oriented in a way that makes it visible to Central Virginians every few months as the craft travels southwest to northeast, with six astronauts currently aboard. What viewers will see is sunlight reflecting off the solar panels of the space station. “It is visible when the sun has set for us on the ground, but the sun is still shining at the altitude of the ISS.” “The ISS looks like a very bright star moving slowly across the sky,” University of Virginia astronomy professor Ed Murphy said Friday in a newsletter to members of the Friends of the McCormick Observatory. (It will do so again Thursday night, but the weather is likelier to be cloudy, so Wednesday is the night to get your view.) The space station will be 260 miles above Earth, traveling from southwest to northeast. Riding high – but not that high – the International Space Station will pass over and within sight of Central Virginians on Wednesday from 6:35 to 6:40 p.m.
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