I was given a cheap telescope with half the parts missing, the other day I set it up just as we were making our way to bed and my wife waited patiently for about half an hour with me as we checked out the moon like never before (yes, with a moon filter and everything!). Last night she woke me up at 5am to tell me that the stars were the brightest she has ever seen them and that you could see the entirety of Orion and she was totally right, in 18 years living here I've never seen them that vivid before. I love that she always takes time to share nerdy stuff like that with me. Nerd-wives are the best.
I think my wife has a mental star map, cause she's pretty good at pointing out constellations to me and sometimes even planets (if you squint real good, you can almost convince yourself Mars looks red). I don't know how good you are handling cold, but I swear, it seems like the stars will never shine brighter than they do on a clear winter night. It must have something to do with the moisture in the air.
That is correct, cold nights are the best; I'm very lucky living so close to Dartmoor where there's practically zero light pollution and it's always a cold night haha. I wish I knew more of the constellations, I just use the (ex-Google) Sky Map and RunaR's ISS Detector, since downloading those I've seen the station dozens of times and it's been awesome noting how it moves across the night sky throughout the year.
I bought a paper constellation guide that glows in the dark from a park gift shop so I can learn more of them, but I need to get out into the country this winter. I have my phone set via iftt to tell me when the OSS is passing overhead but I haven't seen it yet due to the sun being out, or cloudy, or sleep.
Hello! Nice to meet a new person on here :D I'd recommend that ISS detector app, it shows other objects and makes it quite easy to pinpoint where it will be as it shows current and predicted elevation. That said, my experience has been that for a few weeks you'll get a huge burst of activity almost nightly and then things will go quiet for a while; a lot of the time it's been too cloudy to see anything but there's always the odd day where it's perfectly clear. Try seeing it when it's low in the sky (about 30 degrees inclination) and when it's directly overhead (I've seen it very close to 90!) it's absolutely awe inspiring how quickly it goes by, and especially how bright it can be. I've been very lucky to have had the chance to catch it both as it appears on the horizon and as it disappears; it plays an optical illusion where it slowly fades in to sight, moves closer very slowly, wooshes overheard shining like a flare, then slowly moves away into almost a static point in the sky before fading away. Very cool to watch!
You can look quite far ahead, it will always tell you when the next visible pass should be but you might want to tweak the settings so it only shows bright / visible events. I've found the weather forecasting to be mostly incorrect so it counts those as not visible (or visible when it's completely cloudy out there!)
I like it. I want to try and find a time to see it but notifications just before it happens don't work when I am asleep. Also, I thought I was mentioned on this, maybe he deleted it, but I am the nerdy wife on the couch in the original post. HI! I've been lurking around awhile but not posting so much.
I checked out your user page when I didn't recognise the name and saw you have lurked a while, but didn't know that :)! In the app you can add It to your calendar and from there have better control over when you get notified. We're going to see a comedian tonight and there should be a flyover just as we leave which will be cool.