Starry Starry Night

Now these are the best kind of messages. Got pinged to say that I had 15 mins to drop everything, get my ass outside and look up at the sky...Theres only a few things that can get me to move so quickly, one of them involves the words "firewall" & "outage" in the same sentence, the other tends to be space related.

This incident no less than the flightpath of the International Space Station passing directly over Basingstoke + London for tonight (and tomorrow) and will be visible to the naked eye.

Out the door in a heartbeat, armed with jumper, jacket and camera, on a conference call with my mates (yes, we are that geeky) as we dash to high, a non light polluted area for a decent view. (I may add that running across a busy town, leaping tall bushes and fences in a single bound, with phone propped to ear in one hand and camera in the other, trying not to get run down crossing busy roads, or fall about laughing at conversation interspersed with "Can you see it yet?", "F*@^^%!' bush!" and "Wow look at that!" and "oww!" was just about as much fun as seeing the space station itself. But nowhere near as impressive.)

Words can't really state how impressive it looked. As it is visible in the uk tomorrow night too, I have put these links in for your perusal, and a very un-technical way of finding your bearings (but hey, it works)

How to find it
Find the Plough (Ursa Major), [in the West] Find the end of the saucepan handle. Spread your hand wide, and align your pinkie with the tip. Look down and to the left of the plough, the brightest star about a hand span's distance (from thumb to pinkie) is called is Capella. Its about as bright as Jupiter, which is also visible to the naked eye (due south at the moment.) You want to be looking somewhere in the middle of these two stars as that is where you will see the ISS pass through. (see the first link for the timings and the bottom two for helping you get your bearings)

To be honest if you aim for there you can't really miss it. It looks like a really bright and quite slow comet as it passes across the heavens. Quite ironic considering that it is travelling so quickly that it can get from the US to the UK in 15 minutes, and make a full revolution of the world in 90 mins.

Sightings of the International Space Station
>> Human Space Flight Real Time Orbital Tracking (Shows you how quickly the ISS travels across the heavens and where it is at this moment in time)
>> NASA Skywatch - A really good guide to where you are likely to see any spacecraft etc passing over your town.
>> NASA ISS Daily Flightplans - Does what it says on the tin. Also in Russian.

Star Charts (to help you get your bearings)
>> Astronomy NOW Online star chart (Capella is in bold - which helps ;))
>> Skymaps monthly printable star charts and notable events for each month (both southern and northern hemisphere)

I might add that if you are in the UK reading this now, the stars do look exceptional tonight, put the tech down for a moment and go have a look. Jupiter is really pretty. (the really bright star due south)

And while I am on the subject, there are some really impressive meteor showers due this month..