The entire experience lasted about 1 minute. There were no flashing lights or sounds associated with this object, either. Any thoughts as to what this object could have been? You were watching a satellite. It could have been one of thousands of man-made objects including space junk orbiting our planet.
Hang out in your backyard on a dark night soon after sunset and gaze at the sky. My kids and I have seen 20 or more in under an hour. The answer to your question is definitely yes! The best time to spot satellites is early evening when the stars and planets start to become visible until about hours later.
Good spotting also occurs hours before the sunlight starts to appear in the morning. In the middle of the night, the earth blocks the sunlight from the satellites. Hi, I found this super interesting as I have been slightly freaked out by the amount of these I have seen passing overhead at night and no one I talk to has ever known much about them or has had little interest! Not long back me and a friend stood outside my back door and we saw many at once within minutes around 15 fly all different directions but mainly to the left of us random and different distances away it looked like, then 6 met up in the sky in order close together..
Have you any idea? Also it may have no connection but as I looked in the opposite direction a shooting star flew across the sky in the opposite direction which I automatically thought could have been one of these firing into another galaxy haha. Brilliant information, thanks a lot? Those were SpaceX StarLink satellites.
SpaceX is building a large constellation of satellites to provide world-wide internet service. How big is the average satellite? How far away or high are they? Why is it when I see a huge commercial airplane at feet that I can hardly see it? Yet us satellite satellite are typically speaking that is that is hundreds if not thousands of miles away about the size of a Volkswagen be seen with the naked eye.?
Your comparison between a Volkswagen and a satellite is pretty close. Hey my name is Matt Brown and I recently downloaded the ISS detector app and it also has other satellites on it as well.
Planets and iridium flares also.. Has anyone else seen this particular satellite? I have seen the starlink train…. At any rate, nice little blog you got here…. I wonder if there are any lists of satellites maybe by country, function, manufacturer?
Just so you can tick them off, similar to train spotting? There are several satellite tracking apps available for iOS and probably Android, too.
Just found your blog, awesome! I have been watching satellites in the sky from my home in Clearlake California for years, as stated many times in this blog, lots of satellite action between 4 AM and 6 AM. Here's how to tune into them. By: Bob King September 20, Astronomical Tools. The International Space Station passes over virtually all of Earth's populated areas, and you can spot it easily with your eyes alone — if you know where and when to look for it. By: Adrian R.
Ashford and David Tytell August 29, Celestial Objects to Observe. Use this tool to plan viewing these close encounters. Astronomy in Space with David Dickinson. By: David Dickinson July 18, The shock and dazzle of Iridium flares will soon be a thing of the past.
Here's how to make the most of seeing them before they're replaced by a new generation of satellites. By: Bob King January 25, Channel your inner superpower by looking up at the night sky precisely when a dazzling blaze of light is beamed to Earth from outer space. By: Bob King July 17, For a few days each May, you might see the International Space whenever it passes overhead throughout the night. By: J. Kelly Beatty May 21, Sixty were launched this week. That will be followed by more launches, possibly every two weeks.
In all, the company has approval from the Federal Communications Commission to launch 12, satellites, and Musk is seeking approval to launch 30, more. OneWeb, a UK-based company that also wants to beam internet access from space, is seeking to launch satellites, beginning this January.
Amazon wants to launch 3, satellites , in a constellation called Kuiper , also with the goal of selling internet access. In the near future, there could be 50, or more small satellites encircling the Earth, and for purposes other than delivering internet. Could some company arrange bright satellites in the sky to spell out the name of a popular soda? These new satellites are small, mass-produced, and orbit very closely to the Earth to ensure the internet connection they provide is speedy.
But that closeness also makes them more visible, and brighter in the night sky. He says Starlinks are brighter than other satellites orbiting at the same height.
In the long run, this could diminish our view of the universe, create more space debris, and, potentially, deprive humanity of an unblemished view of the night sky.
The deployment of so many satellites is critical to close the connectivity gap. Starlink and its competitors will be able to connect the most remote places in the world which are also often very poor to the internet, and therefore, the global economy.
The world will be more connected than ever before. The systems may also prove useful during natural disasters. When a hurricane takes out communications infrastructure on the ground, rescue crews will still be able to access space-based internet. So what Johnson saw through his webcam view — the train of satellites passing by in quick succession — will repeat after each launch.
Plus, there are a lot of objects in the space — particularly asteroids that are coming from the direction of the sun — that can only be seen at twilight. You may be familiar with the problem of light pollution. But the satellites are not creating light pollution. In the darker places of Earth, these satellites will be even easier to spot. In the video below, astronomer Michael Vlasov has a sped-up animation of what the night sky might look like when there are 12, Starlink satellites in orbit.
Keep in mind, this is a YouTube video, and it may not look all that impressive. But you can see how the early night sky, and predawn sky, is peppered with satellites flying across the sky. Whether you notice them or not in the future may depend on where you live, and your access to a dark sky.
There are a lot of other potential concerns about so many satellites in the sky. One is space debris. When a satellite breaks down in space, it just stays up there as junk until gravity pulls it back down to Earth. Already, several Starlink satellites have stopped functioning and are just hanging out up there as debris, where they present a hazard for colliding with other objects in space. The more space debris in orbit, the harder it becomes to build and operate equipment there.
More immediately, the constellation satellites are a cause for straight-up alarm among many astronomers. In the next decade, they have been hoping to capture an even wider, deeper view of the cosmos from the Earth.
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