Satellite Spectacular

I suppose it is all relative. The best I recall seeing was on hol back in early Feb in the Philippines, on a tiny Island 12 miles from the nearest town (small, and not brightly lit) and 60 mikes from anything bigger.

The Lyrid meteor shower radiates from the constellation Lyra. This is located at its rise between E & NE. The meteorites therefore will come from the east, they might go towards the north or south or overhead to the west.
When we get these so called meteor showers, its the earth passing thru one of the regular dust clouds we encounter as we orbit the sun, always in the same place & therefore the same time of year. They are named according to the star constellation that rises at sunset at the point they radiate from, e.g. Leonids are in mid (17th) November, and Lyrids and Leonids, all meteor showers in fact, radiate from the same point, it’s the direction the earth is spinning.

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The light speck I was observing was tiny, and only noticeable because it was moving. The flash was very bright and white. It was as bright and large as Venus is this week.

It’s a Falcon 9 heading out of Vandenberg.

Depending how high Lyra was last night above the horizon when we were vewing, many may have been obscured by the house as Star Walk app suggested the constellation was behind the house with us sat in the rear garden. It would probably have been worse had we been at the front of the property!

The ‘findstarlink’ software designer has made corrective changes & apologised for some poor & no sightings

" I’m very sorry last night’s timing wasn’t very visible. About 20-25 satellites were expected to be seen, but only 1 or 2 of them were seen. In many places, people did not see any satellites at all. The reason for this is because the 10pm/10:34pm timing was too long after sunset, which wasn’t reflecting enough sunlight to be seen. This issue seems to be happening only in countries far to the North (latitude greater than 48 degrees North). Several timings that are almost 2hrs 30min after sunset are seen regularly in lower latitude areas like the USA and in Asia. I’ve fixed the software to add a special check for northern latitudes, until I improve the math used for this. I’ll also check whether the problem is due to some assumptions my software makes. For e.g., the Earth is not a perfect sphere (while my code assumes it is). I’ll also check if my code considers that the Earth is actually tilted on its axis. "


Tonights viewing is 9:34 UK time
Starlink-5,6 for 6 mins
WEST to EAST
Elevation (from horizon): max: 77°

For anyone interested, the 7th batch is due to go up tonight (approx 19:30 UTC) moved forward from the launch slot on the 23rd (which is now backup).

Live coverage of the launch here

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Thanks for this, launch was awesome :rocket::artificial_satellite::artificial_satellite::artificial_satellite::artificial_satellite::artificial_satellite:

CK

Bringing the launcher back down is actually more impressive.

In the old days only Gerry Anderson could do that…

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Fabulous,many thanks for the link.

Oh well another poor show, saw one quite bright, others (maybe) very faint

I was out on the lawn, house lights off, saw nothing. Daughter came out and saw a couple, put me on to them…at my age you need to get your ‘eye’ in to see them. Still fun and interesting, cannot be that large? , but still can be seen.

Took the image-stabilising bins out into the back garden. The most interesting sight was one of our hedgehogs!

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Not seen one in quite a while, despite putting out places for them to sleep. Great shame, one of our lovely garden animals.

The most we’ve seen at the same time (last summer) was three, but we could distinguish 4 or 5 individuals

We stopped using slug pellets about 15 years ago, have a hedge etc…but very few about. Not even any road kill, though on our lock down walk we did unfortunately come across a road killed Hare…they are in decline as well.

Hi Graeme, although I am no expert it is possible you were viewing the International Space Station as it orbits earth. To quote the blurb " If you chance upon a moving “star” rivalling planet Venus in brilliance, burning with a steady light as it glides across the night sky from west to east, then you can be confident you are witnessing the ISS "
The station orbits Earth every 92.7 minutes at an altitude that varies between 411 and 421 kilometres, travelling at an average speed of 27,500 km per hour.As I said, I am no expert, but it’s possible?.

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Haha! @AlanP, just when I’d been convinced it was Venus! :rofl:

Interesting to know though. Could get into this satellite spotting game.

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Yes, :grinning: since having it brought to my attention, just before lockdown ,I seem to look out for it each evening.

I have seen a very large very bright object in the sky to the West for weeks now.

I assumed it was a satellite :satellite:

Is this Venus?

And if so how can Venus remain in the same place for so long while the Earth rotates and while Venus presumably has a different orbit around the :sun_with_face:?

Admittedly we always see it on an evening walk…