Author Topic: Starlink : Satellite Spotting (Read 53748 times)

kenny008 · « **Reply #20 on:** 05/26/2019 02:56 am »

Quote from: John Alan on 05/26/2019 01:50 am

Looks like a pass over eastern USA in about an hour... FYI
Will take a look and edit this post if I see much...

I’ll tell you that this pass prediction was pretty accurate. I’m camping on the TN -KY border, and it went almost straight overhead at 21:42 CDT. Spectacular. Heavy light pollution, but clear skies. Multiple Iridium-type flashes as the train went by. Glad I saw this post to take a look.

Robotbeat · « **Reply #21 on:** 05/26/2019 02:57 am »

Quote from: kenny008 on 05/26/2019 02:56 am

Quote from: John Alan on 05/26/2019 01:50 am
Looks like a pass over eastern USA in about an hour... FYI
Will take a look and edit this post if I see much...

I’ll tell you that this pass prediction was pretty accurate. I’m camping on the TN -KY border, and it went almost straight overhead at 21:42 CDT. Spectacular. Heavy light pollution, but clear skies. Multiple Iridium-type flashes as the train went by. Glad I saw this post to take a look.

Must've been some clouds in the way for me, then. Glad you saw it.

ulm_atms · « **Reply #22 on:** 05/26/2019 02:59 am »

The Starlink train just went directly overhead. Getting nice and spread out now. Few small clusters left but counted over 50 dots before I lost it to sunset on them.

Would post pictures but they just "fixed" the street light right in front of my house. It went out and I never called about it because I hated it...someone called though...

Tried to take pictures but got nothing but orange sodium glare. Something may have to happen to it again.....

Scylla · « **Reply #23 on:** 05/26/2019 03:13 am »

!#?/@!! light pollution on my horizon. Couldn't see the train pass by. Oh well, another pass tomorrow at a 53° elevation at highest point. Fingers crossed.🍀

OxCartMark · « **Reply #24 on:** 05/26/2019 03:22 am »

I'm not a TLE knowledgeable kind of guy. I used Calsky to predict a passage for my location (Detroit, 10:47-10:52pm ET). I didn't see anything. Magnitude was supposed to be 4.4 at best. Clear skies, typical residential neighborhood lighting (no street lights). What went wrong? Not bright enough? Timing off because the thrusters are changing the orbit? Calsky says the orbit info is 1.1 days old.

The Vorlon · « **Reply #25 on:** 05/26/2019 03:28 am »

Not a chance of seeing anything overnight here--cold front with thunderstorms inbound.

Same fracking thing happens whenever anything interesting is going on in the sky....

krsears · « **Reply #26 on:** 05/26/2019 03:35 am »

We saw them tonight at 22:47ish. Clear skies with no moon risen at the time. Not a lot of light pollution in our area locally but some bleed from Louisville (KY), Corydon (IN), and Brandenburg (KY). The sats were dim as a whole and were really moving. n2yo's data was off by quite a bit on the sky position, but we were expecting that and were scanning the whole sky. It took a full minute before we could fully realize that the fuzzy line was the starlink sats. If they weren't in a line, we would have completely missed them. Once they were "fully overhead" it was easy to tell it was them, but counting them individually was out as many were extremely dim. Some of them did change position and shone brightly for moments before returning to dimness.

Kendall

Quote from: OxCartMark on 05/26/2019 03:22 am

I'm not a TLE knowledgeable kind of guy. I used Calsky to predict a passage for my location (Detroit, 10:47-10:52pm ET). I didn't see anything. Magnitude was supposed to be 4.4 at best. Clear skies, typical residential neighborhood lighting (no street lights). What went wrong? Not bright enough? Timing off because the thrusters are changing the orbit? Calsky says the orbit info is 1.1 days old.

OxCartMark · « **Reply #27 on:** 05/26/2019 03:42 am »

Quote from: krsears on 05/26/2019 03:35 am

We saw them tonight at 22:47ish.

Were the times as predicted?

Its strange, start time was predicted to be 10:47 in Detroit and I looked it up for a friend in Cincinatti and it was predicted for 10:47 there and you are further south and still 10:47. We're separated by 400 miles and on the same minute. Must be moving a bit fast.

tdemko · « **Reply #28 on:** 05/26/2019 03:43 am »

Nice overhead pass here north of Houston, TX at 21:45. Fairly dim until almost directly overhead, then dramatic brightening and flaring. Big train of 45 or so, then some stragglers. A lot of neighborhood street lamp and porch light glare, but did not impair visibility, even with some light low clouds. Felt like a bit of the past (Sputnik) and a lot of the future!

krsears · « **Reply #29 on:** 05/26/2019 03:58 am »

Quote from: OxCartMark on 05/26/2019 03:42 am

Quote from: krsears on 05/26/2019 03:35 am
We saw them tonight at 22:47ish.

Were the times as predicted?

Its strange, start time was predicted to be 10:47 in Detroit and I looked it up for a friend in Cincinatti and it was predicted for 10:47 there and you are further south and still 10:47. We're separated by 400 miles and on the same minute. Must be moving a bit fast.

They are moving VERY fast. n2yo stated that it would take 11 minutes to cross the sky, it did not. I would estimate that it took maybe 5 to 6 minutes to cross our view. n2yo also stated that the angle would be 224 degrees SW and 77 degrees. In reality, the sats were more along 205 to 210 degrees and pretty much 85 degrees up. They were fairly close to directly overhead. We were able to view them with the naked eyes. I didn't want to chance not catching them with a telescope's limited view angle if the information was inaccurate (which it was).

Kendall

Comga · « **Reply #30 on:** 05/26/2019 04:32 am »

Just saw them north of Denver!
Like a meteor trail heading northeast right overhead.
They glinted in series like a string of little lights flashing.
The pass was about ten minutes later than Satflare predicted which makes sense if they are raising their orbits.
Still a pretty tight group

Really, really cool

jongoff · « **Reply #31 on:** 05/26/2019 05:04 am »

Quote from: Comga on 05/26/2019 04:32 am

Just saw them north of Denver!
Like a meteor trail heading northeast right overhead.
They glinted in series like a string of little lights flashing.
The pass was about ten minutes later than Satflare predicted which makes sense if they are raising their orbits.
Still a pretty tight group

Really, really cool

Thanks to a heads up from Mike Grusin on Twitter (that I just barely saw in time) Tiff and I went out and were able to see them. I'm not much of an astronomer, but you could see them with the naked eye. Definitely some glinting that was really bright, though most of the time it was just barely visible. Pretty neat to behold.

~Jon

Semmel · « **Reply #32 on:** 05/26/2019 09:14 am »

Quote from: Robotbeat on 05/26/2019 02:54 am

I looked twice. Didn't see them either time, even though I looked in the right spot. I need a darker sky, I guess.

...I guess there goes the "oh no, it'll pollute the nightsky" argument.

The location on sky was pretty accurate for me, not a big deal since you can see half the sky when looking up. For me, the timing was off by several minutes. So, be plenty early and don't give up too soon. Also your eyes need time to adapt to the dark as well.

Edit: Also have a binocular ready for when you see them.

OxCartMark · « **Reply #33 on:** 05/26/2019 05:22 pm »

Mods please move applicable posts here from this thread - https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47594.msg1950452#msg1950452

RocketLover0119 · « **Reply #34 on:** 05/26/2019 05:33 pm »

glad a spotting thread was started, will be going over me tonight starting at roughly 10 o'clock (Eastern Time US)

So excited to see what this will look like!

OxCartMark · « **Reply #35 on:** 05/26/2019 05:45 pm »

Quote from: RocketLover0119 on 05/26/2019 05:33 pm

So excited to see what this will look like!

Some advice - Take your camera in after you're done looking. I left my camera on the roof of my car overnight and it was wet this morning. Didn't discover it until ~11:00.

CT Space Guy · « **Reply #36 on:** 05/26/2019 07:59 pm »

What web sites are people using to predict the overpass? I took a quick look at heavens above yesterday but didn't find Starlink...Thanks

CJ · « **Reply #37 on:** 05/26/2019 08:07 pm »

I'm confused; I see some people reporting Starlink train spottings well into the hours of darkness. How is this possible? Unless the sats are in sunlight (and it's dark where the observer is), how can they be visible?

Also, am I doing it right when calculating sunlight altitude; I'm doing a simple distance-to-horizon calc, using the sat altitude. I then apply this to the terminator, to see how far east of the terminator (for sunset) the sats would be in sunlight.
I know this is a kludge method at best, but it's worked for me for ISS and other sat spotting, so I'm hopeful I can see the starlink train using it.

I'm getting roughly 1500 miles as distance-to-horizon for the sat altitude of 279 miles. This gives me, *roughly* for mid-latitudes (I'm using 40 north), based on earth's rational speed at that latitude of a viewing window of 795mph, a bit over two hours of post-sunset (or pre-dawn) viewing time.

Scylla · « **Reply #38 on:** 05/26/2019 08:21 pm »

Quote from: CT Space Guy on 05/26/2019 07:59 pm

What web sites are people using to predict the overpass? I took a quick look at heavens above yesterday but didn't find Starlink...Thanks

Currently, I'm going here....https://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=74001

Mind you, due to passes being too low in light pollution or cloudes, I have yet to spot them. Also keep in mind, sites don't update often enough to take in account orbit raising. Timing could be off. Get out early and stay late.

Barrie · « **Reply #39 on:** 05/26/2019 08:22 pm »

Quote from: CT Space Guy on 05/26/2019 07:59 pm

What web sites are people using to predict the overpass? I took a quick look at heavens above yesterday but didn't find Starlink...Thanks

www.satflare.com, yellow box top left