International Space Station to fly over today and Tuesday

The International Space Station will make a pair of spectacular passes over Hawaii tonight and Tuesday if the clouds cooperate.

Tuesday’s pass is for early risers only but will bring the space station close to the moon and a pair of planets.

The space station will rise in the southwest at about 7:37 tonight and head straight for the top of the sky, passing between the constellations Canis Major, or the Big Dog, and Orion the Hunter.

The star Sirius in Canis Major is the brightest in the sky, shining at magnitude minus 1.46, but the space station will be several times brighter at minus 3.5.

The second-brightest star, Canopus, lies low in the south below Sirius. Jupiter will be almost halfway up the eastern sky.

Near the top of the sky, the space station will approach the constellation Gemini before it drops toward the northeastern horizon, disappearing into Earth’s shadow at 7:42 p.m.

At 5:27 a.m. Tuesday the space station will suddenly appear high in the western sky, moving to the left under the bright star Arcturus, or Hokule‘a.

It will pass above the bright star Spica in the constellation Virgo at about 5:28.

At 5:29 a.m. it will intersect the constellation Scorpius, which has Mars near its left claw. Above and to the left of Mars is a waning gibbous moon, and just below the moon is Saturn.

Those with an ocean horizon clear to the south-southwest might be able to see the star Alpha Centauri, the closest to our sun at 4.4 light-years. It is rarely seen from Honolulu because it is so far south.

The space station will blink out of sight in the south-southeast at about 5:31 a.m.

The space station is occasionally visible before sunrise and after sunset when it is illuminated by the sun against a dark sky. It is 249 miles high and is orbiting at 17,130 mph.

Currently aboard are NASA astronauts Timothy Kopra and Jeffrey Williams, British astronaut Timothy Peake and three Russian cosmonauts: Yuri Malenchenko, Alexey Ovchinen and Oleg Skripochka.