Skip to main content

ISS Detector: Get Notified When the Space Station is Visible [Android]

Have you seen the International Space Station with the naked eye? When the ISS is at its perigee (closest to earth) and its magnificent solar panels fully lit by sunlight, it appears as a bright star, steadily moving across the sky. When fully lit, the ISS is the second brightest object in the night sky brighter than Jupiter and Venus. At other times it appears as a moderately bright star.

The ISS makes 18 revolutions around the planet in 24 hours passing over any place on earth at least once each day. There are several online resources that lets you calculate in advance the exact time when the International Space Station is visible in the sky of the observer. ISS Detector is one that is designed to run on Android devices.

ISSDetector is an easy to use automatic personal ISS tracker. The app can be configured to notify you through alarms and notification bar icons before the ISS appears in the sky, up to 15 minutes in advance. ISSDetector can even track the bright flashes of the Iridium communication satellites.

iss-detector2 iss-detector

After ISSDetector detects your location through GPS, it will download tracking data from NASA and Heavens-above.com and display a list of dates along with the time when the ISS or Iridium satellites are visible. Touching an item displays details about each pass including start and end time of the event, start elevation, end elevation and maximum elevation, apparent magnitude of the space station, as well as a radar screen indicating the direction of the path.

Additionally, ISSDetector will retrieve weather forecast of the observation place to give you an idea whether there is a possibility of sighting. Look out for the cloud icons.

An appealing feature of ISSDetector is that it retains the downloaded information on the phone, so that the next time you open the app you don’t need to be connected to the Internet, unless you are at a different location. In that case, gently touch the refresh icon to download new data.

Download ISSDetector from the Market or by scanning the QRCode below with your phone.

iss-detector-qr

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

69 alternatives to the default Facebook profile picture

If you have changed the default Facebook profile picture and uploaded your own, it’s fine. But if not, then why not replace that boring picture of the guy with a wisp of hair sticking out of his head with something different and funny?
332 comments
Read more

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows?

Whenever the computer is lagging or some application is taking too long to respond, we usually fire up task manager and look under the Performance tab or under Processes to check on processor utilization or the amount of free memory available. The task manager is ideal for real-time analysis of CPU and memory utilization. It even displays a short history of CPU utilization in the form of a graph. You get a small time-window, about 30 seconds or so, depending on how large the viewing area is.
17 comments
Read more

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.
1 comment
Read more