Fun with PyEphem

I just tried finding out when and if the International Space Station would pass overhead. First I installed pyephem for linux:
$ sudo easy_install pyephem
Then started python and typed the following:
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Oct 5 2007, 13:36:32)
[GCC 4.1.3 20070929 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-16ubuntu2)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import ephem
>>> home=ephem.Observer()
>>> home.long = -43.9
>>> home.lat = 19.9
>>> home.elevation = 1000
>>> home.date = "2007/12/09 20:00"
Getting the information about the ISS was a bit harder. Had to go to this page at celestrak and get the first three lines then enter it in ephem.
>>> iss = ephem.readtle("ISS (ZARYA)",
... "1 25544U 98067A 07343.37458451 .00020246 00000-0 12456-3 0 4837",
... "2 25544 51.6404 280.6485 0000524 313.0633 141.2500 15.77203764518419")
>>> iss.compute(home)
>>> print iss.rise_time, iss.transit_time, iss.set_time
2007/12/9 16:26:18 2007/12/9 16:29:51 2007/12/9 16:33:25
Definitely easy enough for me to write a little python program to get the most interesting events happening in my area tonight.

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