After a long hiatus, all you visitors to our website can once again get predictions for when the International Space Station will be visible. Today a new Javascript applet has been added to our library of interactive observing tools. And just in time, as the station is about to enter another period of good evening appearances throughout the United States.

Contributing editor Adrian Ashford recast the core of the program (originally developed by Roger Sinnott) into our new Satellite Tracker.

You'll find that it's much improved over the earlier one, with several new features. Topmost, to me, is that not only can it remember your location by saving settings on your computer, but also you can quickly switch to other locations with pull-down menus for cities around the world. There's also a real-time display (see the image above) showing where a selected satellite is. Right now, you can select either ISS and the Hubble Space Telescope (which can only be seen from latitudes well south of Boston). We'll add the Space Shuttle when it's flying.