What time can I see the ISS tonight?

It depends on where you are. Visible passes happen in the hour or two after sunset or before sunrise, on some days and not others. An app such as Overhead calculates the exact times for your location.

How do I tell the ISS from a plane?

The ISS is a steady white light with no blinking or coloured lights, and it moves in a smooth, straight path. Planes flash and usually show red and green lights.

Can I see the ISS from the UK?

Yes. The ISS passes over the UK and Ireland several times a day, and there are usually a few visible evening or morning passes every week or two.

How to See the International Space Station (ISS) Tonight

The International Space Station is the third-brightest thing in the night sky after the Moon and Venus, and you don't need a telescope to see it. Here is when to look, where to look, and what you'll see.

What you will see

The ISS looks like a bright, steady white light moving smoothly across the sky. It doesn't blink and has no coloured lights, which is how you tell it apart from a plane. A good pass takes four to six minutes from one side of the sky to the other, and the brightest ones outshine every star.

The station orbits about 420 km up at around 28,000 km/h, going round the Earth roughly every 92 minutes. It passes over most of the populated world, between about 52° north and 52° south.

Why only at dawn and dusk

The ISS doesn't make its own light. You see it because it reflects sunlight. That only works when your sky is dark but the station, high above you, is still in sunshine. This happens in the hour or two after sunset and before sunrise.

In the middle of the night the station is usually in Earth's shadow and invisible, even when it passes straight overhead. Sometimes you'll see it fade out mid-sky as it enters the shadow.

Around midsummer the Sun never sets far below the horizon at higher latitudes, so the station stays lit all night. That is why the UK, Ireland and northern Europe get runs of visible passes all night long in June.

Which passes are worth it

Height: how high the station climbs, in degrees above the horizon. Above 40° is good; near 90° means almost straight overhead. Low passes are dimmer and easily hidden by buildings and trees.
Brightness: given as a magnitude, where lower is brighter. Magnitude −3 or below is dazzling; around 0 is still easy to see; above +2 is faint in a town.
Darkness: the darker your sky, the better. Passes right after sunset against a blue twilight sky are harder to spot.
Cloud and Moon: obvious, but worth checking before you go out.

Overhead combines all of these into a 0 to 100 viewing score, so you can see at a glance which passes are worth the trip outside.

Where to look

Every pass has a direction it appears from (for example, from the west), the direction it climbs to, and where it vanishes. Be outside a couple of minutes early, face the direction it rises from, and look about 10° above the horizon, roughly the width of your fist at arm's length.

Other stations and satellites you can see

Tiangong, China's space station, is smaller and a little fainter than the ISS but still easy to see.
Hubble orbits at a low inclination, so it is only visible from about 35° north to 35° south.
Crew and cargo ships often fly just ahead of or behind the ISS for a few hours after launch or before docking.