The space shuttle discovery is currently docked with the International Space Station and has been passing overhead our area for the last few days. Coming up soon will be a very good pass, high in the sky.

A very good website called Heavens Above will generate predictions for you:

http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&lat=44.27962&lng=-76.54449&loc=Kingston%2c+Ontario%2c+Canada&alt=73&tz=EST

Saturday March 05
Mag -3.5
Start pass 19:37:30 10 NW
Midpoint Pass 19:40:12 66 N
End pass 19:40:12 66 N

This says to go outside early, maybe 19:35 EST and look to the Northwest. At 19:37 you may notice the ISS/shuttle about 10 degrees off the horizon. Just over two minutes later it will be at its maximum altitude of 66 degrees in the north.
And then the pass ends immediately, as the ISS/shuttle disappear into the earths shadow.

Here is a starchart generated by Heavens above.

Other good passes in the next few days are:
7 Mar -3.7
18:53:44 10 WNW
18:56:40 78 NNE
18:58:47 17 ESE
and
9 Mar -3.6
18:09:43 10 WNW
18:12:39 85 NNE
18:15:34 10 ESE

Saturday saw a raw Magnitude -8 Iridium flare over our observatory.
This was in the southeast about 49 deg altitude. Mars was just above it and the group of stars below is the top end of Hydra. The Iridium 47 satellite was visible a few seconds before the flare and a few seconds after. The flare itself lasted only 1-2 seconds at peak intensity.
We get our predictions from http://www.heavens-above.com/iridium.asp with our exact location in lat/long.
The prediction was accurate to within a few seconds, and the experience was a great big WOW!
Updated: Here is the image from our allsky camera of the event:

The image on the left is just before the event, the one on the right, of the event.

And this is both images alternating with each other.

The iridium flare does not look like -8, in comparison to Mars, but then consider the integrating time of 120 seconds for the non-transient events.

A few minutes later we were treated with a UFO! A tumbling satellite that flashed us 4 times every 10-15 seconds right overhead with an estimated magnitude brighter than -10! Perhaps another dead Iridium satellite?

On March 5th we were treated to a near overhead pass of the International Space Station. This image is from the start of the pass looking west in Newburgh Ontario and is a 64 second exposure with a canon powershot A540 using the CHDK firmware upgrade. The ISS was spectacular, shining at a record setting (for us) Magnitude -3.3
The next two images are 15sec exposure, first overhead and then towards the northeast.


And after the fact, here are two images from the allsky camera of the iss passing overhead:

The Allsky Concam saw something last night, most likely a low flying aircraft.  It appears on two frames, one at 23:19:05 local and the other at 23:22:25 local.  The first obvious check is to see if the International Space Station went by, but heavens-above.com says no.  We then checked  it against all other bright satellites for the time and nothing.  The resolution of these images is low, only 657 x495 pixels but even when blowing this up it does not appear to have typicaly blinking anti-collision lights of an aircraft.  And it is brighter than the aircraft we regularly image.  Interesting.  The complete nights video is at /concam/special/today20081223.gif and also shows some more annotation.

Spaceweather.com highlighted another allsky camera system at

http://www.heliotown.com/Ashcrafts_Fireball_Archive.html

that had an owl come by one night and land on the dome.  Very cool!  Hope it didn’t leave any scratches.  More and more this highlights the need to look at a video capture system rather than a digital still system I think.   Granted the video would not be as low light as the ST-237A with 2-4 minute exposures but TANSTAAFL.

Just watching some of the new Hd channels that we are getting from the Starchoice satellite service and noticed that the HDNet channel (275) will be broadcasting the launch of the STS-126 space shuttle at 7:55 p.m. EST on Nov. 14 on a mission to prep the station for expanded crews.
Of course it runs right up against our RASC-KC Annual General Meeting, so it will have to be recorded.