This ISS It: International Space Station Over Los Angeles!

On Tuesday night, an operative exuberantly Tweeted about the International Space Station's scheduled orbit over Los Angeles. The Militant Tweeted the info, and at least a few of you were able to see it. Blogger and Tweeter Highland Park 90042 was able to capture it flying over NELA.

Tuesday's fly-over was spectacular in that the spacecraft was able to reflect a lot of light from the setting sun, and its orbit was close to being directly over Los Angeles; it emerged from the northwestern sky at about 7:34 p.m. and the bright, non-blinking object flew in a straight diagonal line Full-On All The Way Across The Sky (Whoa! OMG! OMG! whooooo!!!!) until it faded above the southeast horizon. It was visible for a full four minutes.

The ISS flew over Los Angeles again on Wednesday night, orbiting somewhat more southwest of the City, but still visible from the West-Southwest sky for two minutes, making a dash under a bright crescent moon, finally disappearing from view over the Southern sky.

The Militant took a pic of it with his trusty Militant Cam, using the motion setting with the flash off and took the pic you see above. Of course, the Militant Compound is filled with lots of nifty technological thingamajigs, so he was able to enlarge the tiny dot to this:

(Click to Enlarge)

Cool, huh? You can easily make out the space station's solar panels on the left and right sides of the image. All from some 260 miles above Los Angeles!

Of course, the ISS is no stranger to this area. Many of its components and modules were built right here in Southern California, at companies like Boeing Aerospace in Huntington Beach and SpaceX in Hawthorne.

The ISS flies over Southern California fairly regularly, though broad daylight and cloud cover obviously hampers the viewing experience. Visit this site to find out when the ISS orbits over Los Angeles next!