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Last revised: 03 November, 2001 .
Latest News
http://www.heavens-above.com/main.asp?Loc=Port+Erin&Lat=54.090&Lng=-4.760&TZ=GMT
As I am sometimes late in updating satellite times, why not click on the Heavens-Above website above. You are only a few clicks away from lots of interesting information.
Update:- Saturday 24th November The International Space Station will not be visible again during the evenings until 6.00pm on the 12th December. .
Update:- Friday 17 August Last chance to see the Space Station is on Saturday night as it passes low to the southern horizon, just above Mars. Then it cannot be seen until sometime in October!
Update:- Sunday 5 August The Space Station is now much brighter and was clearly visible . At 8.09am this morning I saw my first ever Daytime Iridium Flare, which means seeing the sun reflecting from a satellite in daytime!!
Update:- Saturday 4 August The Space Station is now much brighter and was clearly visible last night (00-15am) even though there was a patchy layer of thin clouds.
Update:- Monday 30 July The brightness of the Space Station as it passes over should be much better than in previous months because of all the extra's that have been added recently.
International Space Station viewing times from Port Erin.
Looking South, ISS passes from W to E (right to left) and the max elevation is the angle between the Earth and the sky directly above you. Should you need any further details, just drop me a E-Mail. If you want to look at the times and Visible Pass Charts yourself, just click on the heavens-above link at the top of this page.
Below is the Visible Pass Chart for Friday 8th June
Update:- Sunday 24 June The brightness of the Space Station as it passed over recently seems much better than in previous months. After the 13th June, it will be another 2 months or so before the Space Station is visible during the evenings!
Sunday 22 April Update. The Space Station is not visible in the evenings for a few weeks now, so the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the Russian TM32 Spaceship that are visiting it over the next fortnight will not be seen as they arrive or depart.
Sunday 8 April Update. Last night in clear skies, the Space Station moved very slowly from SSW to SSE as it must have been travelling more towards me than sideways. It finally disappeared as it approached the full Moon. An added bonus was a shooting star just after ISS became visible.
Saturday 31 March Update. MIR has now come down.
| Mir has re-entered the atmosphere! Everything seems to have gone according to plan. |
 |
Friday 16 March Update. MIR will no longer be visible in our skies as it prepares for Splash Down at 8.00am on Thursday the 22nd March.
Saturday 24 February Update. ISS was visible last night as it passed low to the South above the hills of Fistard. It was quite bright, and at one point I was almost expecting a "Flare" from the Sun shining on the solar panels, but it did not materialise..
Monday 19 February Update. As the Shuttle was in the east, the Space station was visible in the West, about 5 minutes behind. Good stuff.
Saturday 17 February Update. WOW Once again the Space Station followed the shuttle across a clear sky, the distance was much further because the Shuttle is much lower and ready to return to Earth tomorrow. Latest news on MIR is that it will be mid-March or later before it crashes down to earth into somebody's back garden!
Friday 16 February Update. WOW - Did you see that It's not often that the Space Station is clearly visible twice in one night, but tonight exceeded all expectations with the Space Station following the Shuttle Atlantis across the sky at 6.20pm and 7.55pm. Hopefully the viewing times shown below will now settle to being correct to within a minute or two.
Thursday 15 February Update. The viewing times have been adjusted by a few minutes again due to the motors of the Shuttle Atlantis being used to raise the orbit of ISS by about 6 miles to 237 miles up. The Shuttle will separate from ISS on Friday, so both should be visible close together for a couple of days.
Wednesday 14 February Update. Very clear skies tonight. As the Space Station passed Orion a "shooting star" came downwards. Later there was a bright Iridium Flare. The times for ISS seem to be changing by a few minutes each day, probably the effect of the docked shuttle and altitude changes being done.
Tito Signs On The Dotted Line For The Trip Of A
Lifetime
Moscow (Interfax) Jan. 30, 2001
Head of the
Russian Aerospace Agency Yuri Koptev has signed a contract for U.S. businessman
Dennis Tito's flight up to the International Space Station (ISS) as a tourist on
board the Russian 'Soyuz-TM' spacecraft, the Agency's press service has told
Interfax. The world's first
space tourist is expected blast off on April 30 on a so-called visit mission,
along with Russian cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin. The size of the
contract has yet to been officially disclosed, but certain sources say it is
around \\$20 million.
Thursday 8 February Update. The Shuttle Atlantis is due to undock on Feb 16th, so should be visible close to ISS for a day or two before it lands. It should be good to view if the skies are clear!
Wednesday 7 February Update. Atlantis blasted off at 11.13pm tonight on it's mission to the International Space Station to deliver the Laboratory Destiny.
Friday 26 January Update. With clear skies, two of the brightest Iridium Flares were seen tonight, Intensities -7 and -8. They cannot get brighter than that!! MIR is "scheduled" to land "somewhere" on March 6th. Hope no-one gets hurt.
Saturday 20 January Update. MIR may be visible again at the end of February before it is brought down to earth. See www.spacedaily.com for more details.
Sunday 14 January Update. MIR was visible tonight, possibly for the last time if it is brought to earth in late February. China has a space ship in orbit for a few days and details can be obtained from www.spacedaily.com which seems to be a good news site for space news.
Wednesday 10 January Update. MIR and 3 satellites were seen on Monday, including an Iridium Flare magnitude -8 which was really bright for a few seconds. And to think that the flare was brighter than Venus and due to the sun reflecting from a 6ft X 3ft teflon coated antenna 500 miles up in space!!
Sunday 31 December The weatherman said today's weather would either be a washout or a whiteout. It's a washout. Happy New Year !!
Saturday 30 December Tonight's Iridium Flare was very bright as it clearly showed up between the patchy clouds. Although it only lasted a few seconds, it was very impressive.
Friday 29 December The sky was very clear tonight and I saw two "Iridium Flares". It seems that they are having problems controlling MIR which is due to come down in February anyway. Interesting!!
Just to clarify the
viewing, looking South and holding the chart in front of your face, Aquarius
would be about 30°
"Clear Skies"
Sunday 3 December 2000 The Space Station will soon have it's new Solar Panels in place, these are approx 90ft X 240ft, so should make it one of the most visible objects in the night sky. The TV say that it will be visible again from the 15th December, I will update my viewing times below nearer the time.
Sunday 26 November 2000 The Space Station is not due now until about the 18th December, but their are some Iridium Flares around with one during the daytime on Wednesday 29th November at 1.37pm!
Saturday 21 October 2000 After 2 months neglect of the web site, I am here again. The web-counter is not working, so a new one will be installed soon. The Space Shuttle and International Space Station have been great to watch as they followed each other across the night skies yesterday and tonight. and the Iridium Flares are providing some really bright flashes in the sky. There is also the Monarch Assurance Chess Tournament on at the Cherry Orchard Hotel, Port Erin, and there are quite a lot of Grand Masters etc playing there.
Friday 25 August 2000 The ISS has been clearly visible for the last 6 nights and now disappears for a while. MIR becomes visible again about the 3rd September. I will be keeping an eye open for some Iridium Flares from now on. These are much more localised and can be much brighter than your average satellite. I saw one yesterday (magnitude -1), tomorrow there is a really bright flare (magnitude -7), let's hope that the bad weather that has just arrived will depart just as quickly !!
Thursday 3 August 2000 Manx telecom have launched MANXNET CLICK FREEDOM giving unmetered Internet access 24hrs X 7 days a week from 1st August. The price is £21.00 per month which includes your line rental. We have signed up and are now using it so this web site will be on the move again soon. Luckily we are now fully prepared to move it.
Tuesday 11 July 2000 I have now finished reconstructing the website, it looks the same but has been done on Front Page 2000. Everything is backed up onto floppy discs in case we move web providers etc.............
Saturday 8 July 2000 I
can now publish pictures on the web pages (see Isle of Man Links page), so will
have to start reconstructing all the pages soon by mainly copying what is on the
internet, although I have some files backed up on floppy discs.
Saturday 17 June 2000 The
TT has finished and Tesco’s has been open now for a few weeks.
This page is being edited using Microsoft Word 2000 and I am just testing
it out.
7 April 2000 At midnight last night we saw the Northern Lights for the very first time. It was a spectacular display, very slow moving and looked like very wide white vapour trails with large patches of red. It covered most of the sky directly overhead, nothing like the dancing Aurora Borealis but definitely impressive and awe-inspiring. Despite the street lamps and a neighbours security flood light it was seen very clearly from our back garden.
11 March 2000. MIR was clearly visible tonight as it passed below Orion. Tomorrow should be the day that we connect to BT Internet, we will keep you informed on how it goes.
5 March 2000. BT have brought in their freephone tariff for £9.99 a month, it is offering off-peak free surfing mid-week and weekends.
7 February 2000. It has been a sad time this last 4 weeks with the Fishing Vessel Solway Harvester sinking just off the Isle of Man with the loss of the 7 man crew. We hope that the families will have some comfort now that the bodies have been recovered from the sunken vessel and returned to their home town for burial. We think that the Isle of Man government have set a good example in these difficult times and our thoughts are with the families.
25 January 2000. Two more good sightings of MIR yesterday and tonight, with the clear skies. A little frost about at nights, whilst going to work along shore road this morning, a car was parked across the road on its roof and there was another big hole in the farmers wall. There was a Wren in the garden, surprised me as it was only a few feet away in the "brambly" part. The latest news about Sky On-Digital e-mail is that if you buy the infra-red keyboard you will have the TV remote control that cannot be lost down the side of your chair. At about £30 it's not bad value for money.
23 January 2000. We now have someone new on SKY ON-DIGITAL E-MAIL so how about sending greetings to IAN (MICHAEL) SARGENT at ianmichael.sargent@talk21.com text only for now until we can establish what is acceptable. Definitely TEXT ONLY.
2 January 2000. We have found on the internet a relative Philip Birch (Nephew / Cousin) who runs the Thin Lizzy Tribute Website, Thin Lizzy definitely worth a look.
25 December 1999. Last night the winds came early about 8.00pm. At Ronaldsway Airport 5 miles away the strongest gust was recorded at 91 mph. We survived with flickering lights and without any damage to property or fences, but in other areas of the Isle of Man there were power-cuts and trees blown down.
18 December 1999. The weather has ranged from storm force 10 gales and starry nights, so I was able to see a couple of Geminid Meteors earlier this week. A new web site called www.sagi.co.uk is being created, so as the saying goes, watch that space.
19 November 1999. With very clear skies coming a day too late, from 12.15am to 12.45am I saw 5 Leonid meteorites, 3 in the far distance, but 2 close by and travelling a long distance vertically downwards.
28 October 1999. Had an e-mail yesterday from the Freaks of Nature at http://www.freaks-of-nature.co.uk/ why not try their website and sign their visitors book.
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Last revised: 03 November, 2001 .