Santa Trackers and seeing the International Space Station as it goes over on Christmas morning

Festive image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

 

If it's not cloudy in the UK tomorrow morning (Sun 25 Dec 2022) at 7.12am you may be able to see - with the naked eye - Father Christmas in his sleigh and the International Space Station flying overhead, travelling from West to East. They'll appear as a tiny bright white dot moving quite fast, with no blinking.

The latitude table linked here is for London and more Northerly / Southerly cities might not be able to see it directly, but can certainly watch along online. Santa Claus' journey path can zip about a bit as he's not relying on quite the same laws of physics as the rest of us and can use a bit of magic to appear in more than one place at once. 

Spot the Station: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

Enter your city to find times and dates, and where in the sky to look, for the International Space Station. This link will take you to sightings for London.

Christmas Day - Sunday 25th December 2022
Sun Dec 25, 5:39 AM       3 min      61°      61° above SE     10° above E     
Sun Dec 25, 7:12 AM     7 min     86°     10° above W     10° above E

NORAD Tracks Santa: https://www.noradsanta.org/en/map

This uses radar, infrared sensors (Rudolph's nose gives off a good heat signal) and geosyncronous satellites to track Father Christmas' sleigh throughout Christmas Eve.

FlightRadar24 Santa Tracker:
https://www.flightradar24.com/multiview/2ea2ef9b

FlightRadar24 has multiple sensors around the world tracking aircraft flights thanks to a transponder on every aeroplane that transmits its location. Santa's sleigh (flight registration: HOHOHO) has been fitted with a transponder, and for greater accuracy, Rudolph the Reindeer's antlers can be used as an antenna.

Google Santa Tracker: https://santatracker.google.com/

Follow Father Christmas as he drops presents down chimneys and there are also games to play too.

You can also just type where is Santa into Google, and see what happens when you type Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

A lovely evening #scicomm event at the Royal Geographical Society, marking Galapagos Day

Thanks to a post published to psci-com (a mailing list I run for people involved in public engagement with science / science communication) I went along to an absolutely brilliant event last night (Wed 10 Oct 2018) at the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington. It was organised by the Galapagos Conservation Trust and the talks were audio recorded (whether they'll be made publicly available I don't know).

I had such a lovely time at #GalapagosDay @RGS_IBG this evening, hearing talks abt monitoring things near or on the islands: ships (to spot dodgy ones doing illegal fishing), plastic (drones to map, then identify using Zooniverse) & Giant Tortoises + hatchlings (w ISS / Icarus!)

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) October 10, 2018

Other than Charles Darwin's visit and 'rather big tortoises' it had never occurred to me quite how clueless I was about the Galapagos Islands (didn't really know where* they were, didn't know people lived there but about 25,000 do) so this was a useful crash course in getting a sense of the place and what's being done to protect it. I'm a big fan of the Shipfinder app (see also, FlightRadar24 for aircraft) which lets you 'see' where marine vessels are at any given time - they're using something similar to monitor ships visiting the coastal areas and using the data (velocity, direction) along with videocameras to predict possible activity. Jorge Carrion's team at the Galapagos National Park have used this method to catch a few dodgy ships undertaking illegal fishing. His talk was live-translated from Spanish to English, which was quite a remarkable thing to witness.

Brilliant talk from @Diego_EllisSoto at the @RGS_IGB showing how scientists can track Galapagos tortoises from space! Amazing science! @galapagossip #GalapagosDay pic.twitter.com/w1TaJ85SOn

— Nick Dunn (@nidunn1) October 11, 2018

(In the picture above Jorge is on the left and the translator is relaying his talk into the lectern mic)

Ellie Mackay pointed out that the ratio of 'time taken for something to be used' to the 'time it take to break down' highlights that single-use plastic cups are incredibly inefficient (I think she said that cotton can break down in a couple of months whereas plastic is still around decades later). Sadly the ocean seems to be pretty full of plastic and polystyrene and with every tide it's tipping some of this onto the beaches around the world, including those of the Galapagos. She's been using drones to take aerial shots of beaches (much more efficient than trudging many kilometres of beach). The photos can then be analysed by humans (Zooniverse citizen science) and machine-learning magic to spot what's plastic and what isn't. We saw a nice little video of the 'pilot study' of a drone in action collecting images.

🏖Can the Galapagos Islands become completely free of plastic pollution?

The Galapagos Conservation Trust, galapagossip, is working with communities to tackle the growing problem and help ecosystems around the world.#GalapagosDay pic.twitter.com/p2WRSUTZyh

— Marco Mosquera Jensen (@marcomos) October 11, 2018

I also learned that despite being a couple of hundred kilos Giant Tortoises are surprisingly migratory throughout the year making their way from the lowlands to the higher volcanic bits (if the volcano's likely to erupt the tortoises might get airlifted out to safety!) for a change of seasonal food. Migration activity is an indicator of health and GPS trackers are letting Diego Ellis-Soto and colleagues use the International Space Station (in particular the Icarus antenna attached to it earlier this year) to monitor them remotely. Apparently the antenna "can receive data from more than 15 million transmitters worldwide, anywhere on Earth" so it's probably kept quite busy!

Brilliant talk from @Diego_EllisSoto at the @RGS_IGB showing how scientists can track Galapagos tortoises from space! Amazing science! @galapagossip #GalapagosDay pic.twitter.com/w1TaJ85SOn

— Nick Dunn (@nidunn1) October 11, 2018

Ellie had a rather brilliant suggestion in response to a question about what can tourists do to help which was that perhaps a plastic 'exit visa' could be implemented - when you want to leave the islands you have to 'pay' with a kilogram of collected plastic waste from the beaches!

*having no sense of direction I don't really know where anything is ;)

Speakers

Dr Jorge Carrion, Director of the Galapagos National Park

Ellie Mackay, Mission Director of The Plastic Tide

Diego Ellis Soto, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, who works with the Galapagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Programme (GTMEP)

galapagosconservation.org.uk | discoveringgalapagos.org.uk | descubriendogalapagos.ec 

Why do I keep banging on about the #ISS or International Space Station

Every now and again I retweet information about when people near London might be able to see the International Space Station as it passes overhead. These visible passes cluster together and you might get a few good sightings happening over a few days or a couple of weeks and then nothing for a few weeks.

I'm always pleased to see the ISS as it passes and I'm lucky enough to live in Blackheath so, in Summer, I can often time it so that when there's a really good pass (travelling directly overhead and so taking a long time to cross the sky) I can be on the heath which has a lovely big sky feel to it.

From NASA and Flickr user Tim Hamilton

This is my handy guide for the next time I find myself out and about and watching the skies and in want of snappy facts to tell the nearest passerby.

What is it?
It's basically a small spaceship which is circling the Earth several times a day (I think it whizzes round once every 80 minutes or so).


Where is it?
It's about 250 miles away, directly up, and orbiting our planet. It varies in height but is in Low Earth Orbit (so it's not a spaceship in the Star Trek sense).


Are there people on it?
Yes, at the moment there are six astronauts / cosmonauts from the US, Japan and Russia. At the time of writing they're on Mission 33 which runs until 12 November and is staffed by Sunita Williams (US - she's the Commander for this mission), Yuri Malenchenko (Russia), Akihiko Hoshide (Japan), Evgeny Tarelkin (Russia), Oleg Novitskiy (Russia) and Kevin Ford (US).

Edit: 29 March 2013 - they're on Mission 35 and Canadian Commander Chris Hadfield's in charge.


What are they, and the ISS, doing up there?
Science! They're doing stuff on muscle and spinal weakness and how a space environment affects people, also looking at ways of tweaking communications satellites and having a jolly good nosey at the Earth and taking lots of photos.

More info here http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/688643main_Exp33_summary.pdf 

If you're looking at this post after Nov 12 then look here for info on the most current mission.

How fast is it going?
It's going at a fair old pace, about 17,000 miles per hour (to be fair it's got quite a way to travel), more info about it on the wikipedia page.


How big is it?
Apparently about as big as a five bedroom house. More factoids here.

How do I see it?
If you're on Twitter just follow @twisst - it will start sending you automatic messages whenever the ISS passes overhead with a visible pass. You'll need to have your city in your Twitter bio (eg London, UK) otherwise it won't work.

Other helpful pages on visible sightings are NASA's own page and Heaven's Above

So what?
It's cool, it's up in space, there are people on it, doing science and taking awesome photos.

I think I need a bit more information for ISS passes

There's an ISS pass coming up at 21.45pm tonight but I seem to be missing either a bit of information, or the skills to understand the info below.

It's easy if the ISS is passing over close to 90 degrees as I just look West and look directly up and I'll see it. But the lower the degree value the further away it is from 'straight up' - but on which side? I know there are other sites on the web where you can get more information about length of transit and the arc it will sweep, but I don't think there's quite enough info below, especially if the ISS pass was at 23 degrees say. Or am I just being dense?

Is it a good one?
This time, the International Space Station will be flying over at 55 degrees. Its magnitude will be -3.2: extremely bright!
Where to look?
ISS will come up at the horizon from the west.

But on which side of the West?

I've drawn a diagram of me happily spotting the ISS (artist's impression, not drawn to scale you understand) at 45 degrees but what if I'd been looking at the other side?