Four ISS Passes in a night! Credit @Mark_Humpage
International Space Station UK Passes – The International Space Station – ISS is back over UK skies with some great evening passes during May 2020.
The Eta Aquariids Meteor Shower is active from April 19th to May 28th. The peak of the shower is on the evenings of May 4th and 5th. There is activity a few days ether side of peak in 2020.
The Eta Aquariids are an annual meteor shower best seen in the southern hemisphere. This is due to the location of the showers radiant near the water jar in the constellation of Aquarius. The radiant doesn’t appear above the horizon in the Uk until just before dawn this time of year.
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UPDATE! New launch date – See below for details.
Starlink Launch – The launch has now been postponed until a date to be confirmed in June. Initially the launch was planned for May 17th 2020. SpaceX planned launching another batch of 60 Starlink satellites. You can watch the launch live from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Details to be confirmed.
This will be the 8th launch to date. Bringing the grand total so far to 480 Starlink Satellites in orbit.
The launch window is 03:10 a.m. EDT (07:10 GMT) 08:10 a.m. UK time. The time and date can change at short notice due to weather or technical issues. This will postpone the launch for a later time or date.
North Star – One of the first things to find when you start out Stargazing is find the North Star.
The North Star is literally the star that indicates north. When you are looking at it you are facing north. This makes it probably one of the most important stars to learn and find in the night sky.
When you have found the North Star, you can get your bearings and find all other directions to look in.
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April showers? Yes! The 16th to the 25th this month brings us the April Lyrid Meteor Shower. The peak occurring on April 21st.
The meteors in the Lyrid Meteor shower tend to be bright and leave persistent trains as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. In recent years the shower has averaged 10 to 20 meteors per hour.
You may think that this sounds like a fairly mediocre shower and not worth bothering with. It has been known for the Lyrids to surge and rates rise rapidly to over 100 per hour! This is what makes this shower so interesting and difficult to predict. Will it be a biggy this year or not?
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