Here’s a cool thing to try out. You can actually see the International Space Station with the naked eye if you know where to look in the sky and at the correct time. What’s more, whilst you’re looking up in to the night sky, tracking the space station go above your head, you can listen in to the astronauts talking on the space station. I am not kidding. This is all really possible and it’s not very difficult to work out. Here how you do it.

Go to : http://www.heavens-above.com/

On that web site there is a link called ” Select from Map ”
http://www.heavens-above.com/LocationFromGoogleMaps.aspx

Find your exact location down to your street or at least your town or city and place the Google maps marker on it. This tells the web site where you are located (your longitude and latitude). Then click on the link called: ” ISS ” which is located under the section called Satellites. It’ll bring up a table of times, dates and locations in the sky where the ISS will appear. It shows you where it will rise from, where it’ll be above you and where it’ll set in the sky. It usually takes about 5 minutes or so for the ISS to pass by over head.

OK so before the ISS actually appears in the sky, you should login to NASA TV and tune to the live space station video. You can find that here:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

The link to the live space station video is to the right hand side of the live video playout.

So, now you’re listening to the astronauts and you know when the ISS will pass over head. Get ready, turn up the volume on your PC/laptop so you can hear the action and go stand outside in your back yard or street in hearing distance of your computer (or take the laptop in your hand if you’re on wireless) and look up towards the rising point of the ISS. There, you should see a VERY bright white star like object that’s noticeably and very slow gliding higher and higher up in to the sky. That’s the International Space Station.

Pretty cool, huh?