The International Space Station (ISS) goes around the Earth every 93 minutes, or about 16 times each day. As it does this, it passes over Bowdoinham at least a few times each day.
Most of the time, you don't have a chance of seeing it. If it passes by us in the daytime, the sky is too bright. In the middle of the night, the earth blocks sunlight from hitting it. You can only see it when it's dark in Bowdoinham, but the ISS is in sunlight. As it happens, that will happen over the next few evenings.
The ISS is about 260 miles above the earth, moving along at about five miles every second. For us, it looks like a bright "star" moving along at about the speed of an airplane. Unlike an airplane, it doesn't blink or turn. (It does get brighter and fainter. For example, when the sun no longer shines on it, it becomes invisible. The astronauts on the ISS do have some lights, but they aren't nearly bright enough to see from hundreds of miles away.)
Friday, 7 February: (This is the one I wrote about in the Falcon Flash.) The ISS will rise from the southwest a few minutes before 7:00 in the evening. At that point, it will be about 1500 miles away, and still faint and moving slowly. It will probably be a few minutes before you're able to see it, higher above the horizon and moving "up" and a little to left. (Look "below" the moon and a little to its right.) By 7:00, you should be able to see it a bit above the horizon, gradually getting brighter and speeding up.
You'll be able to follow it for a couple more minutes. Then, at 7:02:12, it will enter the earth's shadow. The ISS will turn orange for a few seconds, then vanish. If you were on the ISS at that moment, you would see the sun set behind the earth. (One of the odd things about being on the ISS is that on most days, you see the sun set 16 times each day and rise another 16 times.)
When it vanishes from sight, the ISS will be about 330 miles from us.
This is actually one of the less spectacular ISS passes this week. The one on Saturday is quite a bit better.
Saturday, 8 February: This time, the ISS will climb higher into the sky and get brighter before it vanishes. It will rise a little earlier, at 6:10, again in the southwest. At 6:14:35, it will pass right under the moon, and will be about the brightest "star" in the sky, moving quickly to your left. At 6:15:10, you'll see it pass just below another bright "star". Except that isn't actually a star; that's the planet Jupiter.
After this, the ISS will gradually seem to slow down and get fainter as it goes away from us into the eastern sky. At 6:16:07, it will vanish as it enters the earth's shadow.
Sunday, 9 February: The ISS will rise at about 6:58, again in the southwest. This time, as it rises, it will seem to slant off to the right, swinging around to the north. At 7:02:46, it will be almost all the way to our north, about halfway up in the sky, and will vanish as it enters the earth's shadow.
Monday, 10 February: This should be a particularly good pass. The ISS will rise at about 7:09 in the west south-west, again going "up" and curving to the right. By 7:14:10, it will be high in the sky to the northwest, passing right over the constellation Cassiopeia. (Cassiopeia is a constellation of five stars that sometimes looks like a W, sometimes like an M. When the ISS passes it, it will look like an M that has been tilted a bit to the left.)
The ISS will continue to move to the right, then start to get fainter as it moves away from us. At 7:16:00, you'll see it in the northeast, with the Big Dipper just to its left, looking as if it's standing on its handle. About twenty seconds later, the ISS will disappear in the earth's shadow.