A friend pointed out an article at NASA Science News about "A Fantastic Monday Morning Sky Show". There will be a lot of things to look for in the pre-dawn sky on Monday, November 5... Venus, Mars, Saturn, the comet Holmes, and the just-undocked International Space Station and shuttle orbiter Discovery. They offer some help finding them all with a star map and a link to NASA's SkyWatch web site. But you can get more help than that elsewhere on the Net.

I think a very useful site when looking for visible satellite passes, Iridium Flares, sky maps and other sky viewing info is heavens-above.com. Enter your location (select a city or enter lat/lon coordinates) and you can get personalized viewing info.

Indeed, two visible passes of the space station and shuttle just after undocking should be impressive. It should be visible hundreds of miles north and south of its orbital course over North America. A first pass will be visible over northern Mexico and the eastern US. A second pass 90 minutes later will be visible over the western US and then up to eastern Canada. The second pass will be almost directly overhead where I live in San Jose CA.

To give you an idea what to expect, see my photos from a visible pass of Atlantis and ISS in June. The two will be like bright stars flying in formation across the sky. It's worth getting up early for, even if that's not usually your thing.