Dear All,

I just thought you might be interested to know that tonight between 9.01pm and 9.08pm the International space station(ISS) will be passing right over the Algarve - you might be able to impress your friends if you are entertaining tonight with a few facts - ISS is about 400km above the surface and travelling at 17,500mph and goes round the world once every 90mins.
It goes over twice tonight whilst still being illuminated by the sun, at 9pm it will be as bright as Jupiter it will appear in the SW just above the horizon and go overhead slightly to the NW and then disappear in the NE.

Then and at 10.39pm but on the second pass not as bright and only for 4mins going from NW to NNW to N disappearing at 10.43pm.

Expedition 7 is manned by Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu, they have been up there 26 days and are not due back down until October.

Just thought you might like to share a bit of info about my hobby if you want to know more check out http://www.heavens-above.com

have a good day

Astro Bob
Copied from mail received! - Thanks Astro Bob

i only wish Id been there to see it . Both myself and my son are greatly interested in viewing the night skies--over last few months hes seen quite a few meteorites or falling stars as we call them and i "missed" eclipse of the moon here a week ago as it was 3-4 in morning and i couldnt stay awake!
I dont think we "Look up" enough at the skies and must miss so many marvellous sights. The astronomer Patrick Moore says a powerful pair of binoculars is better to view the heavens than a small telescope and with them you can get quite marvellous views of the moons mountains and the planet venus is wonderful to look at with its changing colours.
I wonder if anyone on the forum has ever seen anything different or unsual in the night sky?
On a camping trip couple years ago we saw something way way up,too far up to be planes or even less helicopters and they (whatever) moved in formation --so couldnt have been satellites ! A perfectly clear starry night --wonder what they were ?