Fun thing to do in Houston tonight, conditions appear ideal. Watch the International Space Station fly over!

If you have never watched the ISS fly over, take my word, it's a thrilling thing to do. Especially if you grab a couple of friends to join you.

Get somewhere with a clear view of the sky, especially toward the north-northwest. At 8:49 PM, watch the horizon (or as low as you can see facing north-northwest) and you'll see a what looks like a very bright star appear, climbing rapidly. It'll cross near the middle of the sky and disappear 6 minutes later, in the east-southeast sky.

If I'm not mistaken, there are 10 souls on that thing. They're flying around planet earth at 17,130 MPH! That's about 5 miles per second. It completes a rotation around Earth about once every 92 minutes. That means the astronauts see a LOT of sunrises and sunsets! Here's another web site that gives you current location and video feed from ISS.

You can sign up for notifications from NASA about flyovers here: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

Be sure you wave at them, but please: NO LASER POINTERS!!

Another fun thing to do is to get someone on the phone that's far away, and watch the ISS together. It brings a connection that's hard to describe.

Cool preparation: Go to this link and be sure to allow it to get your location – you can input your address too – and you'll be able to see an animation of the ISS with the Google Street View surroundings, so you will know EXACTLY where to look, and when! Really handy. It also will update you if cloud cover is likely to be an issue. (Tonight, does not look like it!) There's also a handy phone app, ISS Detector, that will get you all oriented and show you what's going on in the sky.

Set an alarm on your phone or watch to remind you.

Funny note: My brother took some of his coworkers out one morning and since they'd never seen it, they were amazed and excited. One of them asked him, "So… where is it going?"

Edit: Added links.