Starting July 5, 2009, Oahu islanders, including those in Honolulu and Ko Olina, will be able to see the International Space Station as it orbits the earth about 220 miles above. There will be six passes over six days; so if you missed it the first night, you have other chances to view it.
According to Mike Shanahan, Bishop Museum education director and planetarium manager, the station will pass overhead at about 8:50 pm and will be extremely bright. He went on to share that the space station should move very slowly against a backdrop of stars and should be very easy to find.
Additionally, three of the passes will be before sunrise and Jupiter, Mars, and Venus will all be visible too; however, the space station will be brighter than Jupiter. NASA has said that many locations will have as much as five minutes to view the station as it flies overhead. Although the structure will be moving too fast for conventional telescopes, binoculars should improve the view, NASA said.
According to Space.com, “The International Space Station was finally launched on November 20, 1998 to begin its first 92-minute trip around the Earth. The first permanent crew of astronauts arrived on the International Space Station on November 2, 2000. Since then, there have always been at least two people on board. So far, the astronauts residing on the space station have been American or Russian.”
