The International Space Station, or ISS, is brighter than the brightest star and easy to see with the naked eye, even if you live in a big city - you just have to know when and where to look. Travelling at around 30,000 km/h, the space station takes only 90 minutes to complete one orbit, so you can often see it twice or more in a single evening.
There are about 70 Iridium satellites in Earth orbit and they provide a mobile telephone service for any location in the world. Each satellite has three large, flat and highly polished antenna which can reflect the Sun down to the ground, just like a mirror in the desert. If you are close to the point on the ground where this reflection strikes, you will be treated to a spectacular "flare" which can reach magnitude -8 and outshine everything in the sky apart from the Sun and Moon for a few seconds.
This skill calculates when the ISS or an Iridium flare will next be visible from your location. It will let you know when and where to look in the sky and lets you know if the ISS enters or leaves the Earth's shadow and magically disappears or appears whilst still high in the sky.
Here are some of the conversations you can have with Alexa:
"When is the ISS next visible?" Alexa will respond with a summary of the next ISS pass. You can then ask her for more details or skip to the next pass.
"When's the next Iridium flare?" Alexa will give you the time and magnitude of the next Iridium flare. You can then get either more details about this flare, or skip to the next one.
"What are my coordinates" Alexa will tell you your latitude and longitude.
The ISS and Iridium flares are not always visible every day, but we look ahead for up to 10 days to find the next events. You can only see these objects before sunrise or after sunset, when the sky is dark, but the satellites are still illuminated by the sun.
We need to know your position as accurately as possible, especially for the Iridium flares, so please give the skill permission to use your location information.
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