Space station visible in the night sky

The most expensive object ever built will be visible in the night sky from tonight until June 4th.

The $100 billion International Space Station (ISS) will "blaze across the sky every evening", according to Mr David Moore, chairman of Astronomy Ireland, who is urging people to go outside and watch this "amazing sight".

"The space station will cross the sky each night for between one and five minutes from this weekend," he said.

"It will be directly overhead in south Cork and Kerry, though in Donegal it will be very high in the sky as well."

He also said it would be visible even in built-up areas where some might expect street lighting to diminish views of the craft. "It looks like an extremely bright star and will be quite clearly visibly moving through the sky. It can be up to 100 times brighter than even the brightest stars so it is a wonderful sight to the naked eye," said Mr Moore.

He said the ISS would be visible at 10.44 p.m. tonight and again, following a circumnavigation of the Earth, at 12.20 a.m. It will be visible for about a minute, or for as long as five minutes.

The sightings will occur for 12 nights, and the ISS will be visible again at the end of July. Mr Moore said it was visible over Ireland every two months or so. On board the ISS are two astronauts, an American, Ed Lu, and a Russian, Yuri Malenchenov, who have been there since April and are scheduled to stay until October.

Sighting times will differ each evening.

Astronomy Ireland has set up a newsline with daily updates, before sunset, on 1550 111 442, from the UK on 09001 881950. Calls cost 74 cent per minute and the daily message will last about a minute.