Over the next couple of weeks, the International Space Station will make several incredibly bright appearances in the evening sky over the UK, including bright appearances in the early evening of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

On most evenings between now and then, the ISS will make an appearance in the early evening as the second brightest object in the sky after the Moon, and take around two minutes to fly over from west to east.

The ISS is easiest to observe with the naked eye, appearing as a very bright moving point of light. Through binoculars its rectangular outline is just about apparent, but it moves so fast that it can be tricky to hold the binoculars steady – I have found that image-stabilised binoculars make this much easier, though they are relatively expensive.

The table below lists the provisional times when the ISS will be visible from London in coming days, and includes diagrams of each pass. These times may change by a minute or so nearer the time if the ISS performs powered manoeuvres to change its orbit. A more up-to-date list, updated daily, can be found here.

Click on any of the times listed below to open a planetarium view of each event.