Space events happening this week you should gaze upwards to see

Each week I generate an email to the WRAL Weather team, along with about 200 other broadcast meteorologists across the country containing interesting astronomical and other space events to look out for.

The email features things like upcoming launches (four more additions to the Europe's Galileo Navigation Satellite System are planned for launch from French Guiana on Wednesday), meteor showers (the Perseids are coming up in mid-August), conjunctions (the crescent moon has been very close to Mercury and Venus this past weekend), and other sights in the sky. 

Those other sights usually include calculations for visibility of the International Space Station (ISS) and Hubble Space Telescope as it passes through our skies. Sometimes the station's path brings directly over, producing a bright quick moving point of light that takes several minutes to move through the sky.  Sometimes those passes are further away, dimmer and barely rise of above the trees. 

For easy quick reference of which passes to get excited about, I recently began including a color-coded polar plot representing the path each pass takes through the sky. This week's plot immediately caught my eye, filled with some good opportunities and one great one.

Thursday, July 19 (green line in the plot above) beginning at 9:35 pm from the south-southwest, reaching about halfway up the dome of the sky

Friday, July 20 (teal) beginning 5:41 am from the west-northwest, reaching about halfway up the dome of the sky

The best and brightest pass will be Saturday, July 21 (purple) beginning at 4:49 am from the northwest passing directly over Raleigh.  This doesn't happen often.

Later Saturday evening (yellow) beginning at 9:27 pm from the west-southwest reaching about two-thirds up the dome of the sky.

Other morning opportunities;

Tuesday, July 17 at 5:05 am, a pass from the north-northwest just above the treeline.

Thursday, July 19 at 4:57 am, a pass from the north-northwest reaching about one-third up the dome of the sky.

Friday, July 17 at 5:41 am, a pass from the north-northwest reaching about one-third up the dome of the sky.

More pass opportunities to spot the station are expected next week.