I was curious why I wasn't receiving email from SpaceWeather any more about solar flares and recent near-Earth asteroids, so I visited their site and found this very nice tool for predicting good planet observation times.
It uses the longitude and latitude that you supply (I got mine from when I researched it via GeoURL) to give you accurate times for passings of planets and space stations.
I have seen the ISS pass over the house once. I think it was last summer, 2003. I tried to get Berta to come out to see it, but she was too slow. That thing really flies across the sky. It's surprising that it's also brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky!
I have noted that this year has a couple of interesting interesting dates for planet passings. On April 16th, Mercury is going to pass between the Earth and the sun. I don't know if it will be possible to get a picture of this happening, but I should probably look into getting a solar filter for my new telescope in case I want to look at it. Venus is also a good bet for this event in early June this year.
Also, in March, just a week away, Jupiter will be in opposition to Earth, meaning that Earth will be between Jupiter and the sun. This is usually the best time to view a planet because it's as far as it's going to get from the glare of the sun. Now is probably a good time to view Jupiter, even rather than waiting until next week. Especially since it's supposed to get up to 60 degrees this weekend, which means I won't completely freeze when standing outside at midnight!
I should probably get out the GPS and check my accuracy on the coordinates, since I did basically just click on my house from an overhead map and the web site told me my coordinates. They seemed pretty accurate, though. Not that it will matter too much with things that take so long to come about, but I imagine that anything that traverses the face of the sun will probably move quickly.
