Quote:
Originally Posted by eamsie
A relative of mine who works with satellite communications tried to explain to me how the satellites work up there. From what I understood, they don't collide because they are all set to different hights.The thing I'm surprised with is how rockets can be launched into space without colliding into one of them!
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Sorry, I was just being a bit tongue-in-cheek
The Occam's Razor answer is that they check the orbits of existing satellites before sending a new one up there (not difficult considering how accurately amateurs can track satellite movements). According to our good friend wiki, there have been eight known high-speed satellite collisions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob_K
I've read that the average meteor duration in visual sightings is 0.4 sec.
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My personal experience agrees with this. I've never observed a meteor through a telescope (plenty of satellites though!), but they move so fast enough that I can barely follow them with my naked eyes - let alone through a telescope.