Jingsamichty

Last night I was reading about the current Lyrid meteor shower which has been happening for the past week, peaking tomorrow night. The skies are beautifully clear here are the moment, and because I live in the country there is little light pollution so I thought I'd go out into the garden for a bit of shooting star watching.

I was out for about an hour and while I did see some shooting stars/meteors, the most incredible thing was watching the satellites go past. In that hour I must have seen 50-60 satellites.

I know nothing about this sky watching malarkey but I was so interested that I found a website called Heavens Above (reminds me of a gay bar in London) which, if you enter your location, tells you everything you need to know about what's up in the sky above you tonight. Anyone else interested in this kind of stuff?

dbd33

No, I'm incurious. But last night the sky here was full of bats. Never noticed bats before. Harbinger of the apocalypse?

Atlantic Xpat

That nice Mr Musk is going to **** up the night sky for everyone. As will that nice Mr Bezos.Oh, and a company called Telesat in Canada.
Why?
Megaconstellations of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. 100's or 1000's a smallsats whizzing around the globe. The big idea is to bring internet to the masses at low cost. There are many technical challenges with that big idea and the business model is far from robust - another company called OneWeb who had launched 60 or so satellites just filed for Chap 11. There's a lot of physics and engineering involved that I don't pretend to understand, and a great deal of politics and hype (Elon Musk is either a tech genius or a snake oil salesman) but if any or all of these constellations get launched the night sky is going to be a lot brighter with satellites and you'll see less stars. Not to mention the increased risk of orbital collisions and space debris. Thing is that this stuff is not internationally regulated. In SpaceX (Musk's) case they have the FCC approvals from the US and thats all they need to shag up everyone's night sky.

BristolUK

Invasion fleet.

I would be but the nights with the clearest sky are winter and it's too cold to stand on the deck. But I haven't seen anything move across the sky since a shooting star somewhere in NB or NS back in 1975. (except planes and choppers of course)

Siouxie

Yes.. I'm interested.. but the comment about Musk's (etc.,) invasion of the sky is very real.. a friend asked me recently if a picture was of UFO's - around 30 objects in a line crossing the sky.. I explained that those are Space-X satellites.. an abomination.. goodness knows what the isolated tribes must be thinking!


There's been a few news reports

I used to like to watch the old satellites - and the space station. https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/
https://www.space.com/41678-spotting...bile-apps.html
Others I have used (desktop/phone.. https://skyandtelescope.org/wp-conte...e/tracker.html and https://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544 and http://www.satflare.com/track.asp#TOP
Tom's guide has some good apps for phones too.. https://www.tomsguide.com/round-up/b...azing-apps#s17

Atlantic Xpat

Indeed - Starlink (Elon Musk) plans 1600 satellites (but has licences for many more), Amazon (Project Kuiper) plans 3000+, Telesat in Canada plan 117 satellites, and OneWeb planned 650, but as I say are now bankrupt.So thats a crap load of hardware whizzing around the heavens. Unlike geostationary satellites which stay fixed in on point above the earth, these satellites are moving quickly hence the reason why you need so many of them for global coverage. They are also considerably nearer the earth than geo satellites so brighter/more visible.

BEVS

Starlink. I expect it was quite a spectacle but the question is do we need more junk up there. Bad enough what we do down here.

I miss the meteor showers. Used to get out on the Cranborne Chase or similar to settle down for a watch. You don't really get this down here because of the radiant.

scrubbedexpat091

When I was a kid I used to climb onto the roof of our house (parents hated when I did it) and would watch the sky sometimes at night, we didn't live rural but up until the early 90's was far enough from the city to get decent sky views.