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Didn't ride today for exercise or to go shopping so around dusk went for a 3mile walk around the field edges to the next village and back. As I came back I thought it was a nice clear sky, possibly the last clear one for a few days so i checked a tracker and found there was a train passing over so four of us from the house sat on the lawn with beers and watched it fly by for 6 minutes.
Cold but well worth it.
Fascinating to realise what work has gone into it.
Elon Musk may be a cock but he does dream big.
Saw this last month in Tasmania. Had no idea what it was. It was quite unnerving until we figured out what it was!
It's really freaky if it is a recent launch as they are so close together.
We’ve just been watching them tonight, a bit spread out. But apparently there’s another launch tomorrow so does that mean the next few days they’ll be really close together? How long for?
Seen them a few times over the last week. I think in the end there's supposed to be about 12,000 of them!
Lot of shooting stars last night too, it's the Lyrids meteor shower.
Amazing skies at the moment, so clear. The lack of pollution really helps.
Although a lot of astronomers aren't happy about them (especially as it's not just Tesla creating a mini satellite network), crap for many ground-based telescopes apparently
Caught it last night at 8pm here, they were pretty far apart though, hopefully there'll be a more recent launch passing over at some point.
Watched them come over on Monday night, again very spread out.
Re the Lyrids is it best to catch these around 2am or something?
The night sky as we know it is going to disappear. There are over 64000 of this type of satellite planned, and more certain to follow
What app do you recommend for tracking them?
What are they for?
And why do we need them?
My old mum, bless her, messaged to tell me to look out for the shooting stars at 20:50.
Out into the back garden I went to have a gander, I've only every seen 2 or 3 shooting stars before, I looked up to see Musk's phallic symbol strung out across the sky literally above My Back Yard
Who told him he could do that ?
Who has governance over the sky ?
This feels like the ultimate NIMBY scenario.... it's in everyone's back yard
Why does this upset me so, but aircraft are OK ??
Angry and confused ... Help ?? 🙂
I'll add another... 🙂 so you know I'm joking ... but it is a massive shame that looking at the night sky will never just be you and the universe type feeling again ??
Marketing aint it. Its for his global internet access system, which his a useful venture for sure. No reason why they should be illuminated...many thousands of satellites pass overhead every night invisible unless you specifically go to look for them, but these are purposely illuminated (by reflecting sunlight I believe) as a dirty great big advert for Musk's commercial ventures.
A good site for satellites seems to be www.james.darpinian.com/satellites Not used it much just had a quick look as someone sent me the link yesterday, but looks pretty good on the face of it.
but it is a massive shame that looking at the night sky will never just be you and the universe type feeling again
From the moment sputnik went up it never was. You don't have to wait long looking up before you see a satellite.
Nah, they're hard to spot unless you're looking specifically. They're dim objects so go largely unnoticed behind the brighter backdrop of stars and passing aircraft, unlike Starlink which are brightly illuminated.
I struggled to spot the ISS the other night as it was flying over even though I knew exactly where it was in the sky due to light pollution...which isn't actually that bad where I live.
No reason why they should be illuminated…
They're not illuminated, just shiny. The latest ones are apparently black on the underside to avoid being such a distraction.
But also this:
Who has governance over the sky ?
This feels like the ultimate NIMBY scenario…. it’s in everyone’s back yard
Why does this upset me so, but aircraft are OK ??
It does feel like he's privatising a public space, pun intended 🙂
(Although plenty of people complain about aircraft, and I'm guessing you've never lived near a major airport...)
To people in other parts of the country/world, does starlink appear as a "dotted line" for want of a better term?
I live on the south coast and regularly see these overhead, though very spaced out, bit underwhelmed tbh, maybe once lockdown is over I could view from the South Downs.
They won't be there for long. The Russians and Chinese will use them as target practice for their space weapons.
It all links together as part of a global defence system of space lasers.
Just like Independence Day: Resurgence.
And that worked out well didn't it?
Just saw the new ones tonight! Starlink 6,7. Proper train in an arrow straight line, enough distance between them to identify as separate objects but still tight. Fairly low in the sky though so probably the last chance to see them bunched together for a while.
Where are you @ta11pau1 ? Far too light here to have seen them. There’s another pass due at 1045 I think, I’m going to try again.
Also what do you use to look them up?
Cheers that was broken the other night, working now though 🙂
I'm in Kent, the pass at 8:50 was fairly low to the south so any further north and they'd be even lower in the sky.
The satflare site tends to crash around the time of the pass, I use https://findstarlink.com/ aswell, gives the times and a live map.
I think the pass at 22.45 is starlink 5 so a bit more spread out.
@tenfoot yes it was, saw quite a few of them. Apparently 6 went well south of us on its second pass, somewhere over Spain.
I’d like to see the proper train before it splits up, the tracking websites don’t seem to be showing the alerts properly for it unfortunately 🤷🏻♂️