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Starlink Satellites Tracker
- gambiting 5y agoI honestly can't believe Starlink is allowed to do this. It's an absolute travesty, polluting the view of the sky for ALL people on Earth to an absolutely unprecedented degree, for profit of an American corporation. Absolutely despise it, wish all countries of the world came together and demanded the deployments to stop.
- fighterpilot 5y agoEasy to say when you're probably sitting in a rich city somewhere with a perfectly good internet connection
- gambiting 5y agoStarlink is polluting the sky for people who cannot buy its services, and who don't appreciate yet another American corporation invading into their lives, this time taking the very view of the night sky.
- fighterpilot 5y agoThen tax SpaceX for the light-pollution externality until they fix it (which they say they're going to do). I don't think depriving rural communities and poor countries of access to the internet is really the best solution to such a non-problem.
- gambiting 5y agoWhat are you talking about?? Here in Poland(which isn't a poor country!) You can't even buy Starlink here, our astronomical organisations are already complaining about the pollution of the sky, but how can Poland tax an American corporation polluting our sky???? So the question should be - how can an American corporation deprive other countries of accessible view of the sky for profit and get away with it? Because it might be accessible by everyone eventually? That's frankly not good enough. Elon Musk isn't doing this as a charity, but even if it was it still wouldn't be acceptable.
- fighterpilot 5y agoIt's the same argument as for a carbon tax. It's imperfect, because the benefit only flows to the local government (when the commons is globally shared, as you point out), but it's the best practical solution since it broadly aligns incentives with that of the commons. Your solution to simply deprive rural communities/poor countries of internet access is a non-starter. What you're ignoring is that the positive externalities of the tech vastly, vastly outweigh the negative (and supposedly fixable) externalities. Not to mention it's a take that's rather selfish since you're not the one that pays the price of banning this tech.
- gambiting 5y agoBut Starlink isn't, wasn't, and never will be "for providing internet to poorer countries". It's always going to be first and foremost about selling internet to people in wealthy countries in areas without good local internet options. Are we really pretending that people in "poor countries" can afford the cost of the equipment and the subscription? Or that Elon Musk is doing this as some kind of charity? The main problem that I have here is that the uniformity of a full Starlink setup means the entire earth is covered in it, and literally no one else except for Americans has any say in it. That's what's absolutely not cool in my opinion.
- fighterpilot 5y ago> selling internet to people in wealthy countries in areas without good local internet options Even if I grant you that it's not going to be about supplying internet to poorer countries, this reason alone is sufficient. Depriving rural communities of internet over such a small negative externality is a non-starter. > literally no one else except for Americans has any say in it Poland emits significant amounts of carbon pollution, which impacts me, and I have no say in it. Some negative externalities in the global commons is inevitable. You, personally, are contributing to that. Your weather and GPS satellites are contributing to it. The solution therefore can't be a puritanical "I will not allow any global externalities whatsoever.". It's an impractical non-starter and a rule that nobody anywhere follows nor should they try to follow it.
- Alupis 5y ago>Then tax SpaceX for the light-pollution externality until they fix it Can Mongolia tax SpaceX? What about Chad? Or is this just some American corporation doing whatever it wants, to hell with the consequences for the rest of the world? Oh... but we're bringing internet to the world! Just buy this $2,000 USD base unit and subscribe for $100 USD monthly so that your Yurt in the middle of no-where-ville has high-speed internet... What? You have no shoes and only one pair of clothes? Just buy new ones on Amazon and get next day delivery! -- Bringing internet to the world is a noble goal, particularly if it's not brought to the world by the likes of Facebook, Google or Amazon with their clear ulterior motives. Unlocking access to the world's knowledge is critical for the future of all people... but we shouldn't achieve that goal through force, which is what is happening now with these massive multi-thousand satellite constellations against the protest of nations and people alike. The whole "get over it" attitude is staggeringly in bad taste. I also highly doubt these mega-constellations + launch costs are cheaper than putting up PTP and PTMP radio dishes in regions that desire the internet. We can push multiple gigabits through these dishes now for backhaul "lines" and there's been great organizations installing these systems throughout Africa and other places for more than two decades. These folks just need more funding... but radio dishes aren't sexy - instead we're putting these satellites up in space where they impact every human being on the planet, instead of just those who are using them.
- bpodgursky 5y agoIt's pretty hard to be upset about a trivial amount of light pollution which WILL improve lives all over the world... when there are gigatons of literal actual pollution invading the water and skies of the same countries, and barely anyone is making a real effort to fix it. It's really, really hard for me to believe that these attacks on Starlink are truly proportional to the perceived harm. I think that 95% of the upset is directed at SpaceX as a proxy vendetta against Musk, billionaires, or the overall tech industry.
- dawnerd 5y agoI'm be more upset about light pollution than tiny satellites.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoExactly. Some friends of mine are taking of going out of town so they can see a starlink train in a nice dark(er) sky.
- jp42 5y agoyet another comment without actually putting effort to understand spacex's reply to "polluting" night sky argument.
- ChrisClark 5y agoOh, just wait a week or so, then they'll be higher and not visible like this. Just like every other launch. Your 'absolute travesty' is only temporary.
- herewulf 5y agoI'm curious if you say the same thing about airplanes (which aren't exclusively American either). They are also quite noisy.
- gambiting 5y agoThink about it - when Starlink is fully operational there won't be a single place left on earth without several of their satellites always in view. The same definitely cannot be said about planes. Also countries retain full sovereignty to decide whether to allow planes flying above them - same cannot be said about satellites. Countries which cannot even use Starlink are having their night sky polluted by it.
- mlindner 5y agoPoland ceded that sovereignty when they signed the Outer Space Treaty. Poland CAN use Starlink, SpaceX just hasn't offered service there yet (they only recently translated their documentation into French and support is still only in English). The service is still in beta as things are still in development. Service is available in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Germany. Edit: Apparently they just added service in France today as well.
- Isinlor 5y agoYou would have to convince UK that owns 42% equity of the OneWeb company that plans to launch initially 648-satellite constellation. You will probably sooner see EU, Russia and China decide that it is their strategic interest to have their own constellations. As it was with GPS. Currently we have the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and the European Union's Galileo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation
- kalleboo 5y agoIn my opinion they're improving the night sky. Seeing man-made objects out there is inspiring evidence of what man is capable of.
- kitsune_ 5y agoI'm 100% with you on this. People don't seem to get it though.
- gambiting 5y agoAll of my comments on this topic are in massive negative numbers right now - I'm surprised HN is so protective of any criticism towards Starlink. Obviously I see the positive sides of it, for sure, but it's just weird to me that an American company does something that will affect every single person on the globe, in literally every corner of the Earth, and no one here goes "hang on, maybe.... don't?". Yeah internet is important but it's not like there aren't other solutions to this. And yes someone will reply immediately saying that they live 400 miles from the nearest town on top of a rock and they really can't get internet any other way. Like, ok, cool, but maybe putting 42k satellites into orbit to get you internet really isn't worth it to the 8 billion people on the planet.
- callumprentice 5y agoThis is my favorite Starlink tracker - also has a nice integration with Google Street View and shows you exactly where to look. https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink EDIT: Removed "past times" parameter as suggested in comments. Also note you can remove also see loads of other satellites with an unadorned URL : https://james.darpinian.com/satellites https://james.darpinian.com/satellites
- modeless 5y agoThanks! I suggest removing the showPastTimes parameter from the link: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink
- callumprentice 5y agoI wondered about that but I wasn't able to see the Street View integration without it - I think you're right though - better without the past ones. Thank you.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bowmessage 5y agoWe are polluting our night skies and dark places.
- Diederich 5y agoGo outside this evening if the sky is clear. If you're anywhere between 30 degrees and 60 degrees, there are multiple starlink satellites in your line of sight all the time. Can you point them out? No, they're invisible at their operational altitude.
- User23 5y agoThat depends on how dark the area is. I heard that in a Bortle 5 or lower area they are naked eye visible, which really sucks for stargazers. Especially since some of the more interesting naked eye observations have to be done using peripheral vision.
- Diederich 5y agoI've been unable to see them in class 2 areas. I'm a pretty ardent stargazer.
- User23 5y agoIt sounds like your visual acuity might not be that great. Sadly, enthusiasm can’t overcome physical limitations.
- Diederich 5y agoI know that these sats will affect many telescopic observations, but that's been happening a long time. I understand that this interference will end up being several times more frequent. However, for many years, satellite streaks have been algorithmically removed from observations. It's possible that those algorithms will need to be upgraded. That's a small price to pay in exchange for robust and high speed Internet becoming available to huge numbers of people all over the world.
- tectonic 5y agoWe also have a coverage map for Starlink: https://orbitalindex.com/feature/starlink-coverage/ https://orbitalindex.com/feature/starlink-coverage/
- 8jy89hui 5y agoI like this map, I just wish it didn't start with auto-rotate on. Auto-rotate just makes it hard to see as the satellites travel around the world.
- manquer 5y agoPerhaps you can also give filters for "on station" satellites from all. Satellites not yet in station are not really giving coverage yet ?
- gpm 5y agoOriginal author here When I originally created this it was so sparse that it was really easy to distinguish, now that would probably be a useful feature. It's also just not that simple to implement. I threw this together really quickly, and the only data I am using is the orbit tracks, it doesn't include whether or not a satellite is on station yet.
- manquer 5y agoThat makes sense, I guess you can look at the orbit parameters ? I am assuming if the satellites are not yet on station they won't share the exact same plane as those that are in station. They are elevated over few months as they are spread to the right position I believe
- GekkePrutser 5y agoWow those are few and far between. Isn't the idea of starlink that you'd have internet all the time? Edit: Aahhh I see now, it's meant for stargazers (well, starlinkgazers) and it only shows the visible passes. Got it. I'm used to using sat trackers for ham radio purposes and they show all passes, that's why I was confused.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- olex 5y agoIt also shows a single "pass event" for a launch of 60 satellites, the pass alone takes minutes as a long visible chain of sats goes overhead. Really damn cool to see.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoIndeed those are super cool! I might go out to see one of those once the curfew is lifted here.
- marmot777 5y agoSome friends said they saw it go over my town last night but I missed it. I’m stoked there’s a tool to track it.
- betwixthewires 5y agoThere are over a thousand up there. You can see individual satellites now just by looking at the clear sky at night for a while, you'll find some. I see a couple of them almost every night. Someone told me there was a line of them last night, probably from the most recent launch, but I couldn't find them.
- marmot777 5y agoAwesome. I was going to get my son a telescope for this sort of thing. The coolest satellite sighting I’ve had was when I was up on Mt. Hood a few summers ago and could see it really well. There was a meteor shower going on too. Large mountains and infinite space are humbling in a good way. That night was quite a journey. :-)
- fasteddie31003 5y agoI was just outside randomly when I saw the train of lights. It was honestly one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.
- spaceywilly 5y agoSame here! Randomly got out of the car last night at saw a string of them cruising through the sky. It’s really impressive to see, I’ll encourage my friends to use this site to find out when they can see them
- hellbannedguy 5y agoI couldn't sleep two nights ago, and went outside at around 5 am. I looked up, and was astonished. It was a full moon I think, and the satellights looked magnificent. Those satellites will steer a lot of young kids into science. I was to young to fully appreciate us going to the moon, but seeing a perfectly spaced row of "stars" above my home while the neighborhood was dead silent was something I will always remember. This was in the Bay Area. I'm living in Fairfax now. I have been following Starlink since. I haven't had much luck. I thought their telemetry could be configured within seconds, but I guess their are other variables according to Startlink? Oh yea---there is part of me hoping man doesn't overdo it though. This was great, but thousands would be another story.
- ortusdux 5y agoFor the record, these satellites are inserted in groups of 60 at half their orbital height. They have onboard thrusters to boost up to the final operational orbit. There is high atmospheric drag at lower altitudes, so they deploy their solar panels horizontally during this boost period, which usually lasts less than a month. These horizontal panels reflect the sun just after sunset and just before dawn. Once they are at their final height they rotate the panels so they are much less reflective. Basically, the constellation's effect on the night sky is proportional to the number of launches in the last month, not the total number in orbit.
- amackera 5y agoThanks for the info!
- ortusdux 5y agoAbsolutely! Things will be really interesting when they can use Starships to launch batches. I've seen estimates that they could launch 600 starlink satellites at a time. They could theatrically also launch fewer, but put them all the way into their final orbit, skipping the few weeks of light pollution.
- grecy 5y ago> They could theatrically also launch fewer, but put them all the way into their final orbit I wonder if they might choose to do this so the sats keep more of their onboard fuel, and will be able to keep themselves in orbit a bit longer before the inevitable re-entry burn up.
- thereisnospork 5y agoI'd guess it is more efficient to have them boost themselves, so that they act as an additional rocket stage. (and so not need the delta V to elevate and then de-elevate starship's orbit.)
- sand500 5y agoI personally like https://www.heavens-above.com/ https://www.heavens-above.com/ Give it a location and it will tell you all the bright objects that should be visible
- rcfox 5y agohttp://stuffin.space/ http://stuffin.space/ is neat too. It actually shows all of the satellites around the Earth in 3D.
- SquibblesRedux 5y agoEvery now and then I need to compile lists of locations for this or that application. The drop-down of locations in this tracker is very interesting. Does anyone know how the list was compiled?
- antonzabirko 5y agoSoon only the super rich will have sunlight, with satellite networks blocking out the sky in other areas.
- syedkarim 5y agoCome on, why the down votes? This was legitimately amusing.
- antonzabirko 5y agoRich people getting upset lol
- Dylan16807 5y agoIt's an extreme tangent and exaggerated by a million million times. That means it has no connection to the story at all. Maybe I'm wrong to not find it funny, but I'm not a buzzkill in general, I just think this joke doesn't work and needs to be workshopped. And if we did get up to the ridiculous scale to block even half a percent of sunlight I'm pretty sure that would actually be a good thing.
- iso1210 5y agoSimpsons already did it. Musk had better watch out for marauding babies. Hmm, maybe that's why he moved to Texas... ("no jury in the world will convict a baby — except maybe Texas")
- gavin_gee 5y agotext output? where's the AR viewer of starlink overlayed on the sky!?
- yreg 5y agoNot Google Glass level AR, but this is posted upthread: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink
- carabiner 5y agoHeat sinks are holding steady!
- erwinh 5y agoFor a 3d view of the satellites in orbit check out: https://space-search.io/?search=starlink https://space-search.io/?search=starlink
- reaperducer 5y agoIt's interesting to see so many of these satellites are listed as "Bright" in my area. Before the launches, the HN crowd promised repeatedly that nobody would be able to see these satellites and they would not change the night sky at all, and that that looking up in wonder is only something that old people and luddites do, because nothing is more important than global always-on sacred holy internet access.
- jmu1234567890 5y agoThey are only bright for an initial period after launch.
- iso1210 5y agoWhile that's true, it's likely there's always going to be at least some trains that are visible even after full deployment as new satelites are launched to replace old ones Starship will launch say 400 to LEO (rather than 60 as now), could it launch 100 to a higher orbit to reduce the impact? More starship launches (good for proving), and as the satelites deploy at a higher altitude they'll be darker
- colordrops 5y agoWhy is there a need for a starlink-specific tracker when there are plenty of general satellite trackers that also include all the starlink satellites?
- virtuallynathan 5y agoOne of the coolest starlink specific trackers is starlink.sx.
- DataJunkie 5y agoWhile I won't subscribe (I have fiber), I am excited about what this might mean for the future. It would amazing to improve the technology enough to replace 4G/5G dongles. It sounds like the technology relies on being in a somewhat fixed position though.
- p1mrx 5y agoStarlink will never replace 4G/5G in relatively-populated areas, because any RF wizardry they can do from orbit will work even better for talking to a tower at short range.
- p1mrx 5y agoThough I have to admit, 4G/5G is never going to draw lines in the sky.
- tinus_hn 5y agoBut it does not have the costs associated with building a tower in that area.
- p1mrx 5y agoIf you're in an area where it's not worth building cell towers, then Starlink will have plenty of bandwidth... but that's not where most people live. When you look at a city from orbit, you see millions of radios all stacked on top of each other, screaming. That can never scale as well as a distributed array of towers.
- Dah00n 5y agoSatellites (or rather low earth orbit) should be like a well kept house: "One thing in, two things out". But no, let's just not look at history and learn anything at all from things like pollution etc. and let the richest countries make a mess of everything until they see it's a problem and then they (we) will point fingers at poorer countries when they want to launch satellites en mass too. Clean up the damn lawn!
- dheera 5y agoIf they want to cover the entire Earth with internet access, how is it that I see them come and go in bunches rather than just a steady stream all night such that there is always at least one overhead? Having a bunch show up and disappear doesn't sound like very continuous internet access
- m4rtink 5y agoOnly newly deployed sats are (briefly) visible after launch. Most of the constellation is invisible to human eye at any given time, basically once the sats are on the operational altitude. Also while I would actually find sky full of bright sats all nigh long super cool, unfortunately not everybody does, so SpaceX is making the sats as dark as possible.
- iso1210 5y agoIt's easy for those who are well versed in the technicalities of starlink (on both sides of the argument) to forget how most people don't understand the system. Good question, certainly shouldn't have been downvoted.
- legulere 5y agoI’m just leaving this link here again: https://www.darksky.org/new-satellite-study/ https://www.darksky.org/new-satellite-study/
- lawrenceyan 5y agoSpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Satellites on Falcon 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPMqJki82KQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPMqJki82KQ
- chromaton 5y agoMore detailed info about the satellite constellations, ground stations, and a map: https://starlink.sx/ https://starlink.sx/
- steve_avery 5y agoWow, I just saw a cluster of satellites go overhead earlier tonight. It must have been starlink. It was really really cool, and quite serendipitous for me to be camping, in a dark place, seated at the perfect angle to see them between the trees. Definitely a memorable experience.
- pkstn 5y agoHere's also live map with all Starlinks: https://aviamaps.com/starlink/ https://aviamaps.com/starlink/
- dash2 5y agoHere’s my bitter Luddite take on the whole debacle: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/li-bai-and-the-abominable-prague https://wyclif.substack.com/p/li-bai-and-the-abominable-prag...
- SiempreViernes 5y agoThanks for that, it was a welcome break from the endless fangirl mob of Space X threads
- irrational 5y agoJust tonight I was in the backyard with the kids when one one them yelled, “what’s that?”, pointing up. I immediately knew what it was, but just seeing that long string of satellites going by and going by and going by (it felt like it took 5 minutes for all of them to pass) was one of the most shocking things I’ve seen in the night sky (and I’ve seen some crazy stuff in my nearly 50 years). One thing I was a bit surprised about was how they weren’t as evenly spaced as I would have to expected. Most were in a straight line, but a few were a bit off from the others. Some were close together, leaving large gaps. Overall, I can see why the astronomers are worried.
- iso1210 5y agoI guess you don't live on a flight path?
- irrational 5y agoFlight path of an airport? No, we live about 20 miles west from the nearest airport. But any flights from there would go north, south, or east.
- youngtaff 5y agoIt's quite interesting how frequently Starlink satellites de-orbit (and how short a time some of them are up for) https://aerospace.org/reentries?field_reentry_type_target_id%5B%5D=32&field_reentry_sighting_value=All&sort_by=field_predicted_reentry_time_value&sort_order=DESC&format_select=tiles&reentry_timezone_selector=America%2FLos_Angeles https://aerospace.org/reentries?field_reentry_type_target_id...
- dkobia 5y agoLooks like some de-orbit in months! There must be a quite a lot of calibration/testing going on and I can’t imagine how expensive this endeavor must be. I am curious about the failure rate of these satellites at that orbit.