Look up Wednesday evening in Ottawa, see a spaceship
Everyone likes to watch a spaceship fly overhead at 28,000 kilometres per hour, and Wednesday evening brings a good chance. The weather forecast calls for clear skies.
The International Space Station is due to fly over Ottawa at prime time: 7:50 p.m. (It can arrive a minute or two late, so be patient.)
What you’ll see: A bright white light, brighter than a star, moving steadily from west to east. It will be visible for four minutes.
Where to look: It will appear medium-high in the west-northwest sky — a little to the right of due west. It will cross the northern half of the sky and fade into Earth’s shadow in the east-northeast.
You do not need binoculars.
It does not flash lights like an airplane, and there is no sound.
Six astronauts are aboard, including Canadian David Saint-Jacques. They are circling the Earth every 90 minutes, but usually we cannot see them.
The station is only visible when it crosses our sky either a little after sunset or a little before sunrise, when there is sunshine 400 kilometres above us but we are in darkness. The station is mostly white, and you are seeing the sun reflect off it. It does not carry lights.
It will appear again at 8:36 p.m. Thursday but the forecast calls for clouds.