Any Sky Watchers About?

[jeepnik]

Just wondering if there were any other sky watchers among the group. Just watched the ISS go over. Quite bright and watched it from over the Pacific Ocean to the Four Corners.

I'm also in a great position to watch a lot of the Vandenberg launches.

[GunnyMack]

I can remember camping under the stars out at Blue Lake in CA as a kid. No light pollution and the whole Milky Way was visible.
I saw the space shuttle one early morning from my tree stand.
As big as the ISS is it is easy to spot.
It never fails around here when one of the meteor showers is happening it's overcast!
Just humbling how small we are in the grand scheme of things!

[samsi]

I watched the ISS go over a few years back. After thinking that a couple passing satellites may have been it, it was very obvious when it came over - much larger, brighter and lower than all the other clutter.

When conditions are right I can see the Starlink launches from Vandenberg but generally forget to mark the calendar so miss most of them.

When they did the remote recovery of the Boeing Starliner capsule to White Sands we had a great view. The reentry angle was much shallower than I expected and was easy to spot due to the plasma tail.

[Paladin]

Yes, but my son has the Celestrom 5. I am left to Night Skies in the Rockies and Night Vision when not in Alaska. We get to see many satellites, but can't ID many of them.

[jeepnik]

There are several phone apps I've found useful. ISS Spotter shows when it will be passing overhead and lets you set alarms. NextSpaceFlight shows when launches will occur and again lets you alarms. SkyView can identify all of the "satellites", including all of the junk floating around up there. MeteorActive is just that it shows when meteor showers happen. And lastly Planets, if you see something and don't know what planet or star it is.

There are tons of other apps, but these are the one's I use most. Oh, and the NASA app has some good stuff.