Here in London we’re treated to many ISS flyovers, some almost directly overhead.

We had a nice flyover yesterday, with perfectly clear skies. See below link to a long exposure star-trail photo I captured with my iPhone.

https://twitter.com/jeffwass/status/1376619838899154948?s=21

Cool pic - did you use an App for this?

NightCap

https://nightcapcamera.com/nightcap-camera/

Definitely inspires awe. Humans 250 miles up, traveling at 17,000 mph, and you can see them with your naked eye.

My favorite part is when the ISS dot slowly fades out. It's so high up that it passes out of the sun's light before it falls behind the horizon.

My favorite part of this experience was seeing it “turn” above my head. I was finally able to truly visualize from a first person POV, the sign wave I had previous seen on Mercator orbital projections... as seen on the wall of the classic NASA control room view.

It honestly felt like I was able to visualize a whole new dimension.

I trust that you thought you saw that, but bear in mind that satellite do NOT turn at all.

The turns you see on Mercator projections are just that: projection artifacts. Circular low earth orbits (like the ISS) are great circles on the sphere. (The equator line is a great circle for example, but there an infinity of them, with various inclinations)

The turn that you think you saw in real life is just a combination of perspective, optical illusion due to landscape or objects in your field of view, and your mental model of orbits making turns (which they don’t).

I fully understand that. It is why I put the word turn in quotes.

Apparently I could have made that more clear.

This was just a first-hand experience of the illusion that we experience of living on a flat plane being shattered.

Usually, if you can see the ISS flyby, you'll get to see it a couple of times. I was out at a dark sky spot one night to see 3 passes. Caught one in a timelapse sequence I was shooting at the time.