Tag: twisst

Follow Twisst

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If you’re on twitter (and if you’re not, you probably should be) then may I recommend that you follow @twisst?

Twisst is a twitter service that lets you know when the International Space Station is going to be passing your location. And there’s something rather magical about watching it pass overhead, silently and at 27,743.8 km/h (17,239.2 mph). I just popped out to watch an excellent pass this evening and now as I’m writing this, the ISS is over the somewhat vague Somali/Ethiopian border.
Cell C’s woooosh has nothing on that.

There’s other man-made stuff up there too and you can track that – and/or the ISS – using SatTrak.

Watching the ISS is amazing for kids and Twisst gives you all that you need to know – the time of the pass, where it will come over the horizon, how bright it will be and how high up in the sky it will be. You only have to follow them and do nothing else. It’s very easy and completely reliable. The only thing it can’t help with is the weather. And since the ISS is 350km up, clouds will get in the way. (Now crossing Pakistani/Chinese border at 7.41 km/s.)

Just be aware that Twisst takes your location from your Twitter bio, so that has to be accurate for it to work-  as noted on this comment on the site:

I had my location listed as “Dantooine”, an homage to the false location of the Rebel base in Star Wars. After I started getting reports of ISS passes over northern Argentina, I decided to change my location to a set of latitude and longitude coordinates closer to home.

Yeah. Probably best.
(China/Mongolia/Russia/China/Russia and into the North Pacific)

ISS mess

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One of the best things about being a Dad is being able to tell your offspring amazing things.
Often, these things aren’t actually true and even if they are, parental licence allows for a huge degree of exaggeration.
I follow @twisst14, one of the twisst.nl bots on twitter, who helpfully tell me (to the nearest second) what time the International Space Station is coming over Cape Town. They can do it for wherever you’re based as well.
Forearmed with this information, I can confidently predict exactly when Alex is going to see a “shooting star” going across the sky.
The fact that I am always right fills him with amazement – a totally different reaction from that of his mother when I tell her that I’m always right.

Tonight’s ISS pass was very bright, but then so was the sky behind it and the long exposure on my camera was sadly affected by the blustery south-easter. Then Alex went a bit mad on Picasa and we ended up with the picture above. Bit retro and kinda funky, but not as sharp as the last time I snapped the ISS over Constantiaberg – so I’m calling it “ISS mess”.

Twisst tells me that I have another opportunity to spot the ISS again this evening at 21:02:58 and – judging by the snoring coming from Alex’s room – this time I’ll be watching it on my own.

UPDATE: Looked a lot better the following evening.