Man-made wonder in space

I am sure the title of the post is ambiguous. Most people might think it could be about the Hubble Space Telescope or about the thousands of satellites orbiting the earth or even the spacecrafts like Pioneer or Voyager which have long escaped the Heliosphere. But I am going to be talking about the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS is a space research lab orbiting at a height of approximately 220 miles above the earth's surface. This gives the space station an orbital speed of about 27,000 kph. Hence it goes around earth almost 17 times a day. Though most facts about the ISS are fascinating, what I like the most about it is that it can be seen from earth with the naked eye. Because of its speed and its brightness (it reflects quite a lot of light from the Sun), it can be seen from most parts of the earth at least a dozen times every month. Sometimes on a moon-less night, it could even be the brightest object in the night sky.

Even though I have always been interested in astronomy, it is only after I started tracking ISS that I became a regular star gazer. It is a beautiful sight to see the ISS crossing the night sky with the stars in the background. It looks even more beautiful when the ISS goes across the moon. A wonderful website for tracking the ISS is heavens-above.com. One can also follow the other naked eye satellites on this website.

The very reason I started writing this post was because of the following video. It is a time-lapse video of the earth from the ISS. It is AMAZING!!!