Guide
Spot the Station: see the ISS pass over you
"Spotting the station" means catching the International Space Station as it crosses your sky — a brilliant, steady point of light gliding overhead for a few minutes. It happens over almost every town on Earth, and you don't need any equipment. You just need to know when to look up. This page gets you there in three steps.
1. See where the station is right now
Start with the live ISS map. It shows the station's real-time position, the country or ocean it's flying over, and its orbit track for the next 90 minutes. Watching it circle the planet makes the next step click: the station passes over your region several times a day — most passes are just invisible because they happen in daylight or deep night.
2. Get sighting times for your exact location
The pass predictor next to the map lists your next visible passes: type your town (or use your current location) and you get the date, local time, direction to face, how high the station climbs, and how bright it will be. Only genuinely visible passes are shown — after dusk or before dawn, when the sky is dark but the station still catches sunlight. You can also browse pass times by city or check whether it's visible tonight.
3. Get alerted before every pass
The hard part of spotting the station isn't seeing it — it's remembering to look. Visibility runs in roughly two-week cycles, so weeks can go by with nothing, then several bright passes arrive in a row. That's why the best tool is an alert: we email you about an hour before each visible pass over your town, so you just step outside at the right moment.
No app, no account — one email before each visible pass, unsubscribe anytime.
Get alerted — it's freeHow this compares to NASA's Spot the Station
NASA runs the official Spot the Station service, which lists sighting opportunities and offers notifications through its mobile app. SpotTheISS is an independent, browser-based alternative that puts everything on one page: the live map of where the station is right now, visible-pass predictions for any location on Earth, and email alerts that work on any device without installing anything. Both use the same kind of published orbital data, so the pass times agree — pick whichever fits how you like to watch the sky.
What you'll see when you spot it
A bright, steady, white point of light — no blinking, no sound — moving smoothly across the sky over two to five minutes. On a good pass it outshines every star. It fades out when it slips into Earth's shadow, sometimes vanishing mid-sky. For the full spotting technique, read the backyard spotting guide.
Spot the station tonight
- ✅ Check the live map to see where the ISS is right now
- ✅ Enter your town in the pass predictor for exact sighting times
- ✅ Sign up for a free email alert so you never miss a pass
- ✅ Step outside, face the direction shown, and look up