Look, up in the sky.
It's a bird, it's a plane.
No, it's Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, floating in his latest ride.
Skywatchers in northern B.C. who look to the west-southwest each morning for the next two weeks might catch a glimpse of the International Space Station that now keeps Hadfield in orbit, 400 kilometres above the earth. Without the cover of cloud, it could be visible for about five minutes, moving in a southerly direction.
"That's cool, I think I've seen it once before and it was unusually bright and fast-moving," said UNBC physics department chair Erik Jensen. "I'd love to go out and have another look if it's at all visible."
The ISS is similar in size to a full-sized soccer field, and with its large solar arrays and reflective modular compartments it appears in the sky as a large bright object. Binoculars will bring the space station into sharper focus if people are able to track it.
"Some people have computer-controlled telescopes and you can pan the camera to stay locked on the space station as it goes overhead," said Jensen. "I've seen some really cool photos people have taken where you can see the solar panels and see the different modules. You can see that it's not just a circular blob, even with your naked eye."
Several popular websites, including heavensabove.com and isstracker.com, track the space station's position. Users can type in their GPS co-ordinates for Prince George -- 53 degrees 55 minutes north, 122 degrees 47 minutes west and log in to receive regular updates on what satellites are visible.
The Iridium communications satellites are known for their reflective antennae which occasionally direct sunlight in a concentrated beam to the earth. Known as Iridium flares, heavensabove.com also tracks when they are visible over Prince George.
"Unfortunately, this isn't the month you want to be looking for it," said Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist. "The higher cloud will be kind of patchy that time of day but there's such a strong inversion if it does clear out you'll get lower cloud or fog. The chances are low you'll see the sky -- 20 to 30 per cent -- but it's not impossible."
The guitar-strumming, Twitter-tweeting Hadfield is now one month into a five-month mission on board the ISS. Hoping to inspire global awareness with his photos from space, Hadfield now has more than 165,000 followers on his Twitter account. In March, the Sarnia, Ont., native will became the first Canadian commander of the space station.
