Environment & Outdoors

Smiling man next to a large home telescope

After a little break (of 25 years or so) Bob King is celebrating his retirement with a return to The North 103.3's airwaves!After almost 40 years with the Duluth News Tribune, Bob is now retired. But scratch a print guy and you'll find a radio guy; King and then-UMD Planetarium Director Glen Langhorst hosted Startalk on KUMD for several years in the early '90s.Listen for Astro Bob every other Tuesday at 8am on Northland Morning.

Astro Bob's Backyard Astronomy: Multiple ISS Sightings and the Forecast for Aurora

The North 103.3 | By Luke Moravec

Published July 7, 2026 at 9:30 AM CDT

The curvature of Earth as seen from space, clouds and a sunburst

The cosmos are keeping busy with highlights all across the night skies.

In the west, Venus is beginning to buddy-up with Regulus. The two bright points will be in conjunction. Overhead, there will be opportunities aplenty to see the International Space Station. The ISS wraps around the Earth once every 92 minutes (about 16 times a day). In the overnight, there will be two opportunities to see the ISS flying across the sky before midnight, and 3 times after midnight.

Cosmic map of the path of the International Space Station

Eyes can also stay open for northern lights - plenty more are anticipated this summer.

There are also some asteroids out in space getting some attention. A Chinese mission is taking a closer look at an asteroid that might be a large chunk of the moon that broke away. And a Japanese mission is aiming to look closer at an asteroid that's actually two asteroids that have combined to look a lot like a peanut floating through space.

You can hear Astro Bob's Backyard Astronomy every other Tuesday at 8:20am on Northland Morning.