Info updated for December 2022.

This short post, part of our CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar, is to let you know that you may be able to watch Santa’s sleigh as it goes overhead. It doesn’t matter if you believe in Father Christmas or not, whether you’ll actually see his sleigh really only depends on how cloudy it is! In fact Santa’s sleigh follows the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) remarkably closely…

 

In the unlikely event that any small children are awake early on Christmas Day 2022 and it’s not as cloudy as it is today (Sat 24 Dec 2022) in London then you might be able to catch a bright light passing overhead at 7.12 in the morning. It’s a largely overhead pass so the easiest of the three listed below to see. The others are lower in the sky and may be harder depending on what else is in your landscape.

Father Christmas does a number of ‘test runs’ before heading back to the North Pole, apparently.

The timings below are for London, UK but you can enter your own city and see when Father Christmas is passing by.

(Table below updated for December 2022)

Day	Date	Time	Visible	Max Height	Appears	Disappears
Sat	24 Dec	6:25 am	5 min	79°	24° above WSW	10° above E
Sun	25 Dec	5:39 am	3 min	61°	61° above SE	10° above E
Sun	25 Dec	7:12 am	7 min	86°	10° above W	10° above E

See ‘How to spot the station‘ and find out what ‘max height’ and ‘appears’ means in context.

Other ways to track Santa – NORAD, FlightRadar24 and Google’s Santa Tracker.

 

 

Previous Advent Calendar posts

CS4FN Advent – Day 1 – Woolly jumpers, knitting and coding (1 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 2 – Pairs: mittens, gloves, pair programming, magic tricks (2 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 3 – woolly hat: warming versus cooling (3 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 4 – Ice skate: detecting neutrinos at the South Pole, figure-skating motion capture, Frozen and a puzzle (4 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 5 – snowman: analog hydraulic computers (aka water computers), digital compression, and a puzzle (5 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 6 – patterned bauble: tracing patterns in computing – printed circuit boards, spotting links and a puzzle for tourists (6 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 7 – Computing for the birds: dawn chorus, birds as data carriers and a Google April Fool (plus a puzzle!) (7 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 8: gifts, and wrapping – Tim Berners-Lee, black boxes and another computing puzzle (8 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 9: gingerbread man – computing and ‘food’ (cookies, spam!), and a puzzle (9 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 10: Holly, Ivy and Alexa – chatbots and the useful skill of file management. Plus win at noughts and crosses – (10 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 11: the proof of the pudding… mathematical proof (11 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 12: Computer Memory – Molecules and Memristors – (12 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 13: snowflakes – six-sided symmetry, hexahexaflexagons and finite state machines in computing (13 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 14 – Why is your internet so slow + a festive kriss-kross puzzle (14 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 15 – a candle: optical fibre, optical illusions (15 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 16: candy cane or walking aid: designing for everyone, human computer interaction (16 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 17: reindeer and pocket switching (17 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 18: cracker or hacker? Cyber security(18 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 19: jingle bells or warning bells? Avoiding computer scams (19 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 20: where’s it @? Gift tags and internet addresses (20 December 2021)

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 21: wreaths and rope memory – weave your own space age computer (21 December 2021)

 

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 22: stars and celestial navigation (22 December 2021)

 

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 23: Father Christmas – checking his list, spotting the errors (23 December 2021)

 

 

CS4FN Advent – Day 23: Bonus material – see “Santa’s sleigh” flying overhead  (23 December 2021) – this post (an extra one so that people can get ready to track Father Christmas!)