Stargazers will get two opportunities in the coming days (or rather, nights) to watch the International Space Station fly across Baltimore's skies. Both are very bight evening passes, high over head, with plenty of other stuff in the sky to add variety to your time under the stars.
The weather looks pretty good for Saturday night, but Monday evening could be dicey, with "mostly cloudy" skies forecast. Check for weather updates. Urban lighting and thin clouds shouldn't hurt any. The ISS is very bright on these passes.
The first event comes Saturday evening, as the station passes over Lake Michigan and becomes visible from Central Maryland. Look for a very bright, star-like object rising in the northwest at 8:12 p.m. EDT. If it's blinking, has multiple or colored lights, it's an airplane. Keep looking.
The ISS and its crew will climb high overhead, passing just above the moon in the western sky. It will climb as high as 69 degrees - more than two-thirds of the distance between the southwestern horizon and the zenith (straight up) by 8:15 p.m.