ISS passes over Lima
The globe opens centered on Lima (12.1° S, 77.0° W) with the ISS in gold and the city's place card unfolded to the station's passes over the next three days, worked out in your browser from the latest CelesTrak elements with SGP4, the same orbit the globe flies it on.
Each row of the Lima list is one pass: the day, when the ISS rises above Lima's horizon and sets again on Lima's own clock (America/Lima), how many degrees up it climbs, and from which direction to which it crosses. The rows in gold are the passes Lima can see with the eye, the station sunlit against a dark sky.
The gold ring around Lima marks where the ISS has to be for it to stand 10° or more above Lima's horizon, about 1,400 km (870 miles) out; the dashed one, about 2,260 km (1,400 miles) out, where it first clears the horizon at all. Each time the station's track crosses the solid ring is one of the passes in Lima's list.
How to read it
At 12.1° from the equator, Lima lies inside the band the ISS's orbit sweeps, so some passes go straight over the city, up near 90°, and others skim low past it on either side. A pass that climbs past about 40° over Lima is the one to wait for: it's high above the haze and buildings, and brightest, since the station is then nearest.
In the tropics the Sun sets steeply, so Lima's twilight is short and the window for seeing the ISS is narrow: a pass is visible from Lima only in the hour or so after sunset or before sunrise, while the ground is dark and the station, 400 km up, is still in sunlight.
Questions
When can I see the ISS from Lima?
Open this page: the place card lists every pass over Lima for the next three days, and the gold rows are the ones visible to the eye, when the station is in sunlight while Lima's sky is dark. Face the first direction at the start time: the station crosses Lima's sky in a few minutes, and often fades out partway as it enters the Earth's shadow.
How bright is the ISS over Lima?
On a high pass over Lima the ISS outshines every star, and on its best passes even Venus: a steady, unblinking light moving faster than a plane, with no flashing lights. It's dimmer low down toward Lima's horizon, where it's farther away and seen through more air.
What else does the globe show near Lima?
Bogotá is the next city on the globe, to the north of Lima; click its diamond for its own card and passes. Drag to look around, press 6 to ride along with the ISS itself, or switch on clouds (C) to see whether Lima's sky will be clear for the next pass.
Sources
The same view as a link: livex.earth/?clouds=0&radar=0&imerg=0&sats=featured&launches=0&aurora=0&storms=0&severe=0&fires=0&quakes=0&lightning=0&events=0&snow=0&tsunami=0&lat=-12.05&lon=-77.04&city=lima&isspasses=1&issring=1
Drag to look around, scroll to zoom. Settings live in the URL, so any view can be shared.
view | fixed · sunrel · orbit · moon · track |
track | what to follow: iss, tiangong, satgus (Mark Rober's Space Selfie satellite), launch, sunrise, moonrise |
lat, lon | viewer position (fixed) or offset from the subsolar point (sunrel) |
period, inc | orbit period (hours) and inclination (°) |
dist | viewer distance in Earth radii; 0 = orthographic |
mag, rot | size and rotation (°) |
wait | seconds between redraws (default 60) |
time, speed | ISO start time; clock multiplier |
clouds, lights, grid, markers, label | 0 or 1 |
borders | Country borders (Natural Earth), the disputed and undefined ones dashed, and once zoomed in, the countries’ names and the states’ and provinces’ lines, off by default (key B) |
terminator | The day–night line (Sun on the horizon), with the twilight band’s edges dashed: the Sun 6° up and 6° down, off by default (key Z) |
stars | 1, 0, or photo (dimmed like a camera exposed for sunlit Earth) |
sats | all (Starlink + named), featured, or 0 |
aurora, storms, fires, quakes | 0 hides that layer (keys A H F E) |
buoys, buoy | Buoys on the globe, off by default (key Shift+B); buoy=46026 opens that buoy’s window. Click a buoy to open it. |
meteors | The last day’s meteors (Global Meteor Network), recent fireballs and the coming close approaches (NASA/JPL), off by default (key Shift+M) |
iono | Ionosphere wash: tec electron content (GloTEC), drap HF radio absorption (D-RAP), or 0 (key Shift+I) |
lightning, events, snow | lightning, GDACS floods/wildfires/eruptions with NASA's flood map and USGS's US volcano alert levels, snow and ice (keys L D I) |
sst | Sea temperature: temp, anomaly (El Niño, marine heatwaves; 1 means this), or 0 (key O) |
lst | Land surface temperature (VIIRS, MODIS): auto the afternoon’s by day and the night’s by night (1 means this), day, night, or 0 (key Shift+K) |
soil | Soil moisture (SMAP L4): surface the top 5 cm (1 means this), root the root zone to 1 m, or 0 (key Shift+W) |
chl | Chlorophyll-a (MODIS Aqua, Terra), the last eight days: 1 or 0 (key Shift+O; off by default) |
aerosol | Aerosols: aod VIIRS optical depth (1 means this), index the OMPS UV aerosol index, smoke and dust, or 0 (key Shift+Y; off by default) |
waves, wavesrc | Wave height and direction (NOAA GFS-Wave, WAVEWATCH III) as trails that travel with the waves, coloured by height: 1 or 0 (off by default); folder holding its latest.json |
currents, currentsrc | Ocean surface currents (NASA OSCAR, a daily mean, two or three days behind) as trails carried by them, coloured by speed: 1 or 0 (off by default; key Q cycles waves → currents → both → off); folder holding its latest.json |
coral, coralsrc | Coral bleaching heat stress (NOAA Coral Reef Watch degree heating weeks), drawn within 35° of the equator: 1 or 0 (key Shift+R; off by default); folder holding its latest.json |
ash | volcanic ash: EUMETSAT's Ash RGB, and GDACS's eruptions in a window (key Shift+A; off by default) |
radar, smoke, tsunami | RainViewer radar, NOAA HMS smoke, NOAA tsunami alerts (keys R Y Shift+T) |
imagery | live GOES and MTG pictures by day, daily yesterday’s VIIRS when zoomed in, painted neither; with live or daily, the newest night’s lights when zoomed in (key Shift+P; the older truecolor=0/1 still works) |
severe | Severe weather: NWS warning polygons and the SPC day-1 outlook (US), MeteoAlarm's warnings (Europe) (key X) |
imerg | With the radar, satellite rain where there’s no radar: EUMETSAT H SAF (MTG) over Europe and Africa, NASA IMERG elsewhere (R’s middle step turns it off) |
relief | terrain lit by the real Sun, from NOAA ETOPO 2022 (key Shift+E); 0 shows NASA's fixed shaded relief |
reliefscale | terrain relief strength, 0.1–5 (default 1) |
isslive | NASA ISS telemetry panel: track (while tracking the ISS), 1 (always) or 0 (key Shift+L) |
isscam | 1 opens the camera in the ISS telemetry: the station from 120 m above, its solar arrays posed from the live telemetry, and the Earth below (the wheel zooms it, 30–120°) |
firehours | show fires detected within this many hours, 1–24 (default 12) |
launches | 0 hides launch mode (key U) |
bodies, bodyscale | Sun and Moon on/off; enlarge their discs (1 = true size) |
fps | 1 shows the frame-rate display (key ~) |
feeds | 1 shows the data-feeds dashboard: each source's last update and next check (key Shift+U) |
cloudsrc, satsrc | folders holding each latest.json |
Weather data by RainViewer