Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Is The ISS Visible To the Naked Eye?

This morning in Nevada about 5AM I let the dogs out and saw a brightlight coming over the mountains slight s/w to n/easterly. There was no vapor trail or sound and no other usual jet traffic in the sky. As the object went towards the rising sun, it disappeared. Was this the space station? I know some of you say you see it while camping at Trail Crest.

I don't think the thing is lit up with lights, so it has to be lit by sun, so would it be invisible at night on Whitney? Or would you only catch it at dawn? If the weather finally holds out, I'm trying for a summit on Friday and will be looking up trying to see this thing again.

Yes, bobcat, it is visible to the naked eye. Here is the link for times and locations: http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/si...gion=California
It is awe inspiring to me to watch somethinglike this. Our tax dollars at work! Lynn Holland

Yes: It could have been the ISS. The shuttle, ISS and satellites are visible, primarily in the morning and evening as the sun reflects off of them when crossing the sky. There are numerous web-sites which allow you to plug in your coordinates and they will give you a list of visible satellites. One to check out is "heavens-above.com"

It's a blast to see some of these and realize just what you are seeing.

Joe

For some reason my cut and paste is omitting some of the characters. After /realdata/, it should read "sightings/cities/region.cgi?country=United_States&region=California" If this doesn't work you can google international space station and find your way to this site.
Still not working when I preview it. Try google.

Lynn

Lynn, There's no problem. The message board software abbreviated the full url only when it displayed it in your message. The unabbreviated url, which isn't displayed in your message, is hidden and is used by the link to go to the right webpage when it's clicked. Your link works. Try it!

And thanks for the link!!

It looks like Visalia and Bishop are the two cities in the list that are the closest to the Mt. Whitney area.

Bobcat, Here's a link for cities in Nevada.

What I really like looking for is the shuttle and the ISS close to each other. When the shuttle is on a mission to the ISS, there are periods before and after docking where the shuttle and the ISS are not too far apart, moving at basically the same speed and in the same direction. It is pretty cool to see them both at the same time as distinctly separate points of light. Try looking at the NASA website the next time there is a mission to the ISS for a good time to look at them close to each other.

Several weeks ago, a friend called and alerted me to the impending sighting of both the ISS and Space Shuttle moving across the sky. It was really cool -- they were separated by about as much distance as two stars in the Big Dipper, and one was following the other. They both looked like a moderately bright star, but took only several minutes to move across the sky.

What I am wondering is whether the ISS is visible during the day from someplace like the summit of Mt. Whitney. Since I was able to both see and photograph Venus at 11:30 AM from Thousand Island Lake at 9,000 ft. elevation, people should be able to see brighter stars and satellites even easier on top of Mt. Whitney!

If you use the NASA Skywatch link, and plug in the Mt. Whitney summit coordinates, Latitude 36.56, Longitude -118.27, you can find the passes for whatever day you will be on Whitney. I found that clicking the "next pass" button would show successively later dates and times.

I use this site: http://www.heavens-above.com/

What about Kern River Valley, June Lake, and Ridgecrest?

Just eyeballing them on a map, it looks like a list of the 5 places mentioned so far, in order of closest to Mt. Whitney is
1) Visalia or Bishop 3) Kern River Valley 4) Ridgecrest 5) June Lake.

With a little more work, one can use the link in Steve C.'s message to go to any lat/long of interest. After you click on his link, select "input" from the menu above the map.

Hike of Your Life's link looks pretty user friendly. After you click on his link, under "anonymous users" click on "select" to eventually input Whitney Portal or click on "enter" to input lat/long.
Here's what I got by selecting the town Whitney Portal.

PlumpMonkey mentioned a great web site: www.heavens-above.com. It is much broader in scope than the NASA site as it predicts all satellite sightings including the ISS. It is customizable and allows you to select from thousands of locations around the world or put in the lat and lon of your specific place.

There was a unique sighting the last time the shuttle was up. They had separated from the ISS and were orbiting within a mile or so of each other and we saw both the shuttle and the ISS as two distinct objects - way cool! When the ISS is visible, it is usually quite bright.

When you go to heavens-above.com, check out the Irridium Flare sightings!

Enjoy,

Paco

We saw ISS with shuttle docked in as two bright spots moving diagonally across the night sky from Bright Angel Camp ground near Phantom Ranch in GC last Dec (around 16th). The Park Ranger came and told us early that evening to watch for it and it was a dark crystal clear night with unblinking stars! We took several photos with my small Pentax digital and they came our real nice. Yes, you can see ISS with naked as well as digital eye:)
Krishna