The UK under a curtain of aurora

If you have never seen the International Space Station (ISS), make the most of clear skies over the next few nights. It’s capable of exceeding Venus at its brightest and visible for up to 7 minutes as it crawls across the sky in an arc from west to east. Find out when and where to see some favourable passes of this 420-tonne, 109-metre-wide spacecraft over the British Isles and Western Europe.

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying Britain’s Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, parachuted to the flat grasslands of Kazakhstan on Saturday, returning home from a six month mission to the International Space Station.

Tim Peake sees the city lights of his capital city burning bright from the International Space Station last night. He tweeted: “London midnight Saturday – I’d rather be up here…but only just!!”