Spotting satellites

[WingnutR32 (Sam)]

Hi all,

I am quite well able to pick satellites using Heavens Above and Starry Night and it works very well. I am even able to track some of them through my HEQ5 and Starry Night.

I have one question though. Where do I go when I am unable to identify a satellite? I had one come past last night at 6:22pm in the south, straight past zenith towards Mars (North) at 6:23pm. It caught my attention because the brightness was constantly changing through either an artificial light strobe, or it was tumbling.

Heavens Above and Starry Night both were unable to tell me what it was.

My location was -35.451455,149.121494

Cheers
Sam

[Shark Bait (Stu)]

There are a number of military satellites deployed that are not listed. It is likely that the satellite you saw it one of these.

[WingnutR32 (Sam)]

I was thinking along the similar lines, Stu. I was more taken by the brightness changes. I have yet to confirm sighting of a tumbling satellite, so I am unable to say whether this was what was happening.

The brightness pulsed between not visible and at least Mag 2. The pulse took a second between brightness changes.

[WingnutR32 (Sam)]

Apologies for the double post.

I just used "CalSky" and it came up with:

18h32m35shttp://www.calsky.com/observer/icons/icon-sat1.pngCosmos 2297 Rocket
(23405 1994-077-B)
→Ground track →Star charthttp://www.calsky.com/observer/icons...ight007001.pngAppears 18h16m47s 6.3mag az:201.7° SSW horizon
at Meridian 18h24m53s 2.9mag az:180.0° S h:87.1°
Culmination 18h24m58s 2.9mag az:110.5° ESE h:89.0°
distance: 852.9km height above Earth: 853.5km elevation of Sun: -16° angular velocity: 0.51°/s
Disappears 18h33m03s 6.0mag az: 19.8° NNE horizon
Now, again, the changing brightness was the odd thing about this, so if it was a tumbling satellite, then I am happy with that, but odd that heavens above and/or starry night didn't have this information.

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by WingnutR32

Apologies for the double post.

I just used "CalSky" and it came up with:

18h32m35shttp://www.calsky.com/observer/icons/icon-sat1.pngCosmos 2297 Rocket
(23405 1994-077-B)
→Ground track →Star charthttp://www.calsky.com/observer/icons...ight007001.pngAppears 18h16m47s 6.3mag az:201.7° SSW horizon
at Meridian 18h24m53s 2.9mag az:180.0° S h:87.1°
Culmination 18h24m58s 2.9mag az:110.5° ESE h:89.0°
distance: 852.9km height above Earth: 853.5km elevation of Sun: -16° angular velocity: 0.51°/s
Disappears 18h33m03s 6.0mag az: 19.8° NNE horizon
Now, again, the changing brightness was the odd thing about this, so if it was a tumbling satellite, then I am happy with that, but odd that heavens above and/or starry night didn't have this information.

Even though Heaven Above is a great site, it is often remiss of some objects as is CalSky.
There are literally thousands of satellites and space debris in orbit,and so it is possible that some of them will be missed being reported .
I think there is a NASA site which will give you nearly all he satellites.
Google it .
Cheers

[koputai (Jason)]

If you go out every night and just look at the sky for the for an hour or two after sunset you'll see heaps of satellites.

You'll see passes with even brightness, fast tumblers, slow tumblers, flares, and even instantaneous flashes. From my observations, flashes occur mostly to the WNW and about 35 degrees above the horizon, in the 30 to 45 minutes after sunset.

Orbitron is a pretty good program, just update the TLE's often.

Also, here is a Google Earth file that shows every piece that NORAD tracks, live in real time on Google Earth. It updates every 30 seconds.

http://adn.agi.com/SatelliteDatabase...teDatabase.kmz

We have a few PPI's (Multi-Touch Screen like on CSI) here at work and the 82 inch in particular is awesome for Google Earth.

http://www.perceptivepixel.com/82-lc...-touchdisplay/

Cheers,
Jason.

[steve000 (Steve)]

[QUOTE=It caught my attention because the brightness was constantly changing through either an artificial light strobe, or it was tumbling.

Heavens Above and Starry Night both were unable to tell me what it was.

My location was -35.451455,149.121494

Cheers
Sam[/QUOTE]

FINALLY!, I saw similar Saturday night but only for a few seconds. Around a year ago my mum and I both saw 2 very very slow moving flashing objects one after another. It was around 10pm, they were both starting at zenith but one headed north and the other south. just began to shine at zenith and very slowly with around 1 flash each second headed north and south. their speed was around 1/10th that of say the ISS. never found an answer. their distance and trajectory says to me it was a collision and they were the remnants.

Adding do yours, some time ago falcon 9 was launched, you could see the flashing as the rocket body tumbled through the sky, could have been similar hardware. Im aware that things are classified or "not important" enough to document but it would be nice if all man made things of interest like tracked rocket bodies etc was put on a website so we could run in side screaming guess what i just saw and grab a computer and correctly identify that it was not a UFO.

Cool stuff seeing it tho hey