Those next passes will occur in early February. A few weeks later, it passes over again, traveling northwest to southeast. Murphy said the space station’s orbit is oriented in a way that makes it visible to Central Virginians every few months as the craft travels southwest to northeast, with six astronauts currently aboard. What viewers will see is sunlight reflecting off the solar panels of the space station. “It is visible when the sun has set for us on the ground, but the sun is still shining at the altitude of the ISS.” “The ISS looks like a very bright star moving slowly across the sky,” University of Virginia astronomy professor Ed Murphy said Friday in a newsletter to members of the Friends of the McCormick Observatory. (It will do so again Thursday night, but the weather is likelier to be cloudy, so Wednesday is the night to get your view.) The space station will be 260 miles above Earth, traveling from southwest to northeast. Riding high – but not that high – the International Space Station will pass over and within sight of Central Virginians on Wednesday from 6:35 to 6:40 p.m.

View of space station from earth