[SGVLUG] OT: Space Station and Space Shuttle visible over LA tonight

[Claude Felizardo]

Darn, I l forgot to point out that these will be visible with the
naked eye even in the light polluted skies of LA.  You will not need
to go look for a dark place to view it, just get away from street
lights and stuff.

Magnitude is the apparent brightness of an object in the sky where 1
was originally defined by the ancient Greeks as the first set of stars
that became visible and 2 was the next set as it got darker and the
eye became more accustomed to the dark. Tonight, the space station
should be magnitude -2.2 and the space shuttle will be -0.6 so they
should both be quite visible and last for several minutes.  See this
website for a better definition and examples:

http://www.heavens-above.com/glossary.aspx?term=magnitude


On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Alan Horn <ahorn at deorth.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2009, Claude Felizardo wrote:
>
>> For anyone interested, both the international Space Station and the
>> Space Shuttle will be visible from the greater Los Angeles area
>> tonight.
>>
>> For ISS, it starts about 7:15 (sunset is about 7:02 tonight) in the
>> SW, passes nearly overhead  at 7:18 and ends about 7:21 in the NE.
>>
>> STS is in a slightly different lower path rising about 7:35 in the
>> SWS, reaches max alt of 38 degrees in the NW and disappears about 7:40
>> in the NNE.
>>
>
> The last time I went to look at this (which was the above 2 plus a sputnik
> within a few degrees of one another), I drove up the 2 towards mt wilson
> into the angeles national forest to get away from light pollution.
>
> Its been a few years tho, I don't know if that area still has good darkness.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Al
>
>