funny to see this today - I just used it yesterday for the first time, and saw the ISS fly by above Seattle, with the naked eye. Was so cool!
coolest part was, I saw it pass by sometime around 8:00pm. Made dinner. Ate. Did the dishes. Now it's around 10pm. Checked the app again, and... the ISS was passing by again in ~5mins. Looked out the window, and... there it is!
I had this moment of total awe - over the course of my dinner and some cleanup, that little craft, with humans in it, traveled around the entire planet, and there it is again!!
hoping to see a starlink train next, weather permitting.
My favorite part of this experience was seeing it “turn” above my head. I was finally able to truly visualize from a first person POV, the sign wave I had previous seen on Mercator orbital projections... as seen on the wall of the classic NASA control room view.
It honestly felt like I was able to visualize a whole new dimension.
I trust that you thought you saw that, but bear in mind that satellite do NOT turn at all.
The turns you see on Mercator projections are just that: projection artifacts. Circular low earth orbits (like the ISS) are great circles on the sphere. (The equator line is a great circle for example, but there an infinity of them, with various inclinations)
The turn that you think you saw in real life is just a combination of perspective, optical illusion due to landscape or objects in your field of view, and your mental model of orbits making turns (which they don’t).
Usually, if you can see the ISS flyby, you'll get to see it a couple of times. I was out at a dark sky spot one night to see 3 passes. Caught one in a timelapse sequence I was shooting at the time.
coolest part was, I saw it pass by sometime around 8:00pm. Made dinner. Ate. Did the dishes. Now it's around 10pm. Checked the app again, and... the ISS was passing by again in ~5mins. Looked out the window, and... there it is!
I had this moment of total awe - over the course of my dinner and some cleanup, that little craft, with humans in it, traveled around the entire planet, and there it is again!!
hoping to see a starlink train next, weather permitting.