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Look up!!!!


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Hey Folks,

Another opportunity to look up and be wowed. From my esteemed neighbors in the planetarium:

"Skywatchers in the Northeastern part of the US should set their alarm clocks for around 5 a.m. EDT on Saturday and head outside to get a view of International Space Station and -- as a bonus -- a Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft that will be carrying three astronauts up to the Space Station.

"From the Greater New York Area, the ISS should first become visible low toward the western horizon beginning at 5:13 a.m. It will move along a projected path that will take it from the west to the northeast in about four and a half minutes. The Space Station should appear as a whitish "star" with a slight

yellowish tinge, moving with a steady speed across the sky. It should appear brightest -- perhaps magnitude -1 -- as it passes through the handle of the Big Dipper at about 5:14. A minute later it will closely pass by Polaris (the North Star) and begin to noticeably fade.

"Following a short distance behind the Space Station, another, smaller "moving star" perhaps about magnitude +1 or +2 should be visible. This will be a Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft which lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan late Thursday night. The Soyuz will be carrying the Expedition 11 crew to

the Space Station.

"The Soyuz spacecraft is expected to dock with the ISS late Saturday night. This means that both Space Station and Soyuz will appear as two separate entities as they speed across the dawn sky early on Saturday morning. The three-man crew consists of: Roberto Vittori, from Italy, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who is to be the Expedition 11 Commander on the ISS, and NASA astronaut John L. Phillips, who will be the Expedition 11 Flight Engineer.

"The track of the ISS on Saturday morning from 5:12 to 5:17 a.m. EDT will run from southern Indiana, to western New York and up into northern Maine and New Brunswick. Those directly under this track will see the ISS/Soyuz tandem pass directly overhead, but those within a couple of hundred miles of the track should also be able to see both vehicles move across their sky on a general southwest-to-northeast path.

"For other parts of the country, you can check to see if the ISS is scheduled to pass over your neighborhood by going to www.heavens-above.com. Note, however, that Heavens-Above does NOT provide a listing for the Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft!"

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Being one of those guys who would get up early to watch the very first space shots as a kid, I think this may be worth getting up for. Fortunately, I'm far enough from the heart of town that I have a decent shot of seeing them. Looks like the track will go right over me, pretty much.

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