THE International Space Station (ISS) is visible again in our sky, and the good news is that you won't have to get up very early or stay up very late to see it - it will be crossing the sky in the middle of the evening, writes STUART ATKINSON. You'll be able to see it from your garden, or from the end of the street, but if you can get away from all the lights that surround us now after sunset and find somewhere with a really dark sky the ISS will look much more impressive. But wherever you are, seeing the ISS drifting across the sky like a bright star and thinking, "there are people on that," is always exciting and humbling.

You won't need a telescope or even a pair of binoculars to see the space station, it will be clearly visible to the naked eye as a bright star moving across the sky, perfectly silently, at about the same speed as an airplane. All you will have to do is go out a few minutes before the times listed below, look to the west (not sure which way is west? Just remember the direction you usually see the Sun setting in from where you live and face that way) and then just wait. After a few minutes you'll see what looks like a star rising up from the horizon, on a path that will take it on an arc over towards the south - i.e. heading from right to left as you look at it. That 'star' is actually the ISS. It will then move across the sky, heading east. How bright will it get? Well, on some passes the ISS is very high and very bright, but on others it is much fainter and barely scrapes the treetops. But it is always impressive, especially when you realise that you're looking at a huge construction that took over a decade of international collaboration between 17 countries to complete, and as you're watching it some of the people living, working, and sleeping on it might well be looking down at you at the same time.

Here are the dates and times for the next week. October 4: 20.19 and 21.53; 5th: 19.27 and 21.03; 6th: 20.11; 7th: 19.20 and 20.55; 8th:20.04; 9th: 19.12;10th:19.56.