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The Hubble Space Telescope has orbited Earth since 1990, taking some of the most iconic images in human history — and you can watch it pass overhead with your naked eye. At magnitude 1.5 it's brighter than most stars.
OrbitalNodes.ai tracks Hubble in real time using live TLE data. There's a unique satisfaction in watching the telescope pass overhead knowing it's simultaneously photographing galaxies billions of light-years away. We show its current position and predict exactly when it will pass over you.
🔭 TRACK HUBBLE LIVEYes — but it requires dark skies. Hubble reaches magnitude 1.5 at peak, brighter than most stars, but because it's smaller than the ISS and Tiangong it's fainter and needs a reasonably dark sky to spot. From city centres with heavy light pollution it's difficult. From suburban or rural areas during twilight it's clearly visible as a steady moving point of light. Use OrbitalNodes for exact pass times and direction.
This is Hubble's key difference from the ISS and Tiangong — its 28.5° orbital inclination means it only passes over locations between 28.5°N and 28.5°S latitude. That includes Florida, Texas, Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean, North Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia north of Brisbane. It does NOT pass over the UK, Canada, northern Europe, or northern US states — those locations are outside its coverage zone entirely.
Hubble orbits at 535km — significantly higher than the ISS (420km) and Tiangong (390km). This higher orbit means it takes 95 minutes per orbit versus 92 minutes for the lower stations. The extra altitude also means Hubble experiences less atmospheric drag and needs fewer orbital boosts. Its orbit will naturally decay over decades, with reentry expected around 2030-2040 without a boost.
Hubble is a science observatory, not a crewed station or communications satellite. Its 2.4-metre primary mirror captures ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light with extraordinary clarity above Earth's atmosphere — which distorts ground-based telescope images. Hubble has been serviced five times by Space Shuttle crews, making it the only space telescope designed for on-orbit repair. It continues operating in 2026 after 35+ years.
Hubble's contributions to astronomy are immense. It helped establish the precise age of the universe at 13.8 billion years, discovered that the universe's expansion is accelerating (leading to the Nobel Prize for dark energy), imaged the earliest galaxies, discovered moons of Pluto, and produced the famous Deep Field images showing thousands of galaxies in a tiny patch of sky. It has made over 1.5 million observations and contributed to more than 20,000 scientific papers.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in December 2021, observes primarily in infrared from 1.5 million km away — far beyond servicing range. Webb sees further back in time but Hubble's ultraviolet capability and Earth orbit make it complementary rather than redundant. NASA plans to continue operating Hubble alongside Webb for as long as possible. A private mission to boost Hubble's orbit was under consideration but remains uncertain.
A steady, bright moving point of light — similar to a faint ISS pass. At magnitude 1.5 it's comparable to the bright star Deneb or Regulus. It lacks the red-tinged glow of the ISS's large solar arrays, appearing more neutral white. In good binoculars you might just distinguish its elongated shape. OrbitalNodes shows the exact direction and elevation so you know where to look — passes last 3-5 minutes.
Not directly — Hubble is pointed away from Earth when observing, so it can't simultaneously show you what it's looking at. However NASA publishes Hubble's observing schedule and you can look up what target it's photographing during a pass. The irony is that as a tiny dot crosses your sky, its 2.4m mirror is capturing light from objects billions of light-years away — a genuinely mind-expanding thought.
Hubble is only visible from tropical and subtropical latitudes — between 28.5°N and 28.5°S. If you're in the UK, Canada, Germany, or northern US, Hubble never passes over your location. The ISS and Tiangong (51.6° inclination) cover you instead.
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