GALLERY International Space Station Over Cork

By Mark Dunphy - Sun May 01, 10:53 pm

Click image for a larger view

Tim Murphy from Boherbue in Co Cork emailed editor@irishweatheronline.com with this image of the International Space Station (ISS) zooming across the skies over Millstreet, Co Cork, on Thursday, 28 April 2011.

The ISS is a research facility currently being assembled in space. The station is in a low Earth orbit and can be seen from earth with the naked eye: its altitude varies from 319.6 km to 346.9 km above the surface of the Earth (approximately 199 miles to 215 miles). It travels at an average speed of 27,744 km (17,240 miles) per hour, completing 15.7 orbits per day.

According to David Moore, Editor of Astronomy Ireland’s magazine “Astronomy & Space”: “The I.S.S. crosses the sky each night for only one or two minutes and can be seen by anyone with ordinary eyesight as a star-like object, high overhead. It’s an amazing sight.”

“The Station can be up to 100 times brighter than even the brightest stars in the sky, so it is a wonderful sight to the naked eye. ISS is also the most expensive object every built by mankind. If the Shuttle fleet had completed it in a couple of years time it would have cost an estimated 100 billion dollars! So this is a unique object to go out and watch each evening.”, he added.

Keep track of the International Space Station’s path in real-time.

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