Sky Tonight: Live ISS Passes, Satellites & Launches Overhead Now

The night sky isn't static. At any moment, hundreds of satellites are sliding silently overhead — and the brightest of them, the International Space Station, is easy to spot with nothing but your eyes if you know when to look. This hub is built to answer one question: what can I actually see over my head tonight? The live status above shows where the ISS is right now; the pass finder works out when it will next cross your sky; and the launch card flags the next rocket that could seed a fresh Starlink train.

Open the live map and switch on the Satellites layer to watch the ISS and thousands of other tracked objects move in real time.

How to use this tonight

1. Find your passes. In the pass finder above, tap the button and allow the location prompt. Your coordinates stay in your browser — they're used only to do the orbital maths. You'll get the next passes over your spot, each marked Visible (dark enough to see) or Daytime.
2. Pick a visible pass and note the direction. Each pass tells you which part of the sky the station rises from, how high it climbs, and where it sets. Higher passes — closer to straight overhead — are brighter and last longer.
3. Be outside a few minutes early. Face the direction shown, let your eyes adjust, and watch for a steady bright point sliding into view. No binoculars needed; the ISS outshines every star.
4. Watch it fade, not set. A pass often ends with the station blinking out partway up the sky rather than at the horizon — that's the moment it flies into Earth's shadow.

Why timing is everything

The station orbits at roughly 28,000 km/h, lapping the planet about every 90 minutes — so it doesn't hang in the sky, it crosses it in a few minutes. But you can only see it when your patch of ground is in darkness while the station, far above, is still bathed in sunlight. That sweet spot falls in the couple of hours after dusk and before dawn. The same pass that's a dazzling sight tonight may be invisible tomorrow because the station is flying through Earth's shadow instead. The pass finder builds that lighting check in, which is why some overhead passes are flagged as daytime — technically over you, but lost in glare or shadow.

The "string of pearls," explained

Every so often someone films an eerie line of evenly-spaced lights marching across the sky and the internet lights up with UFO talk. It's almost always a Starlink train: a batch of internet satellites just released from one launch, still clustered together before they climb to their working orbits and spread out. The next-launch card above is your early warning — a recent launch from a major provider is the usual prelude to a train appearing in the days that follow. For the full story of why they line up and then vanish, see the satellite tracking field guide.

Where the sky meets the map — a quiet fusion

Here's the link back to the rest of LEV. The same day/night terminator that the map draws across the globe is exactly what decides whether a pass is visible: you need to be on the dark side while the satellite is still in the light. Flip on the day/night line alongside the satellites layer and you can see that geometry — the band just inside the shadow is prime viewing territory. And on nights when the aurora is active, a single dark-sky session can hand you both a bright ISS pass and the northern lights.

A note on accuracy

The pass times here are computed live from the station's current published orbit, which is extremely predictable — but the visibility call (dark enough sky, station still sunlit) is a solid estimate rather than an observatory-grade one. If you're planning around a single specific pass, it's worth cross-checking it against NASA's official Spot the Station service. For everything else — knowing roughly when to wander outside and look up — this is all you need.

So keep this hub open in the evening, check your next visible pass, and step outside. Of everything on LEV, the ISS is the one live signal you can confirm with your own eyes.