‘I still think it’s funny that most people are totally unaware that you can see satellites quite easily with your unaided eye. I shouldn’t think it’s funny, since the majority of people in my country don’t look up very much, and if they do they are looking into light-polluted skies, which makes everything but the brightest celestial objects fade into obscurity.
But satellites are actually pretty easy to see, sometimes rivalling Jupiter and Venus for brightness. And with the advent of such websites as Heavens Above, you can get times of satellite passes and maps of the sky which tell you where to look.
Now, a new site has come along which ups the coolness factor. The Real Time Satellite Tracking site shows you where in over the world a satellite is, in real time. It uses Google maps to display the region of the world, and it’s like you travel with the satellite as the world goes by underneath you. The default page is for the space station, but you can track such orbiting machines as Hubble and Swift. They have a long list of available satellites, too, so you can usually find your favorite. Some are missing, like Chandra and WMAP, but those have weird orbits that aren’t low-Earth, so I’m not surprised they’re off the list.
The site is a lot of fun. I like setting the map on "hybrid", zooming way in on a satellite, and watching it fly over the landscape. It really gives you an impression of how fast these suckers move when they’re in orbit. Enjoy!
Tip o’ the meteor shield to Larry Klaes for — literally — the heads up on this.‘
May 18th, 2006 at 4:41 am
Wow!
Is there any way to turn this into a screensaver?
May 18th, 2006 at 5:02 am
Well, that started my day with an infusion of coolness. Thanks!
May 18th, 2006 at 5:07 am
Amazing!
As I clicked on the link for the 1st time, The ISS was just approaching the south coast of England! It looked like it it was going to pass over London at first but ‘hit’ Brighton instead.. not far off though:)
Filed & monitored (ie bookmarked):)
May 18th, 2006 at 6:54 am
I’d definitely recommend checking out Heavens Above, look out for the Iridium satellites – usually these are below visual magnitude but these can “flare” reaching brightness well beyond Venus, up to -7 if memory serves me.
I’ve got some pics of them and other satellites in my gallery. Only had the camera a couple of weeks too, not bad going.
All the satellites, other than the Iridium flares were accidentally captured, just to give you an idea of how many there are!
May 18th, 2006 at 7:21 am
Google Map Satellite Tracker…
Most people who track satellites use Heavens Above or J-Track but there is now a google maps implementation. Too cool! (via Bad Astronomy Blog)……
May 18th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Pretty cool. My problem is I look up too much.
May 18th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Can you set it to a location and then zoom out to see which satellites are close by? If so, I couldn’t figure out how.
Very cool in any case!
May 18th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Very cool.
I’ll always remember the time my dad pointed out a sattelite crossing the sky to me when we were visiting less civilized parts of the state. Now, instead of spending time looking for one and possibly missing it, I can go to a website and see what’ll be overhead! Maybe I’ll get to see the Hubble sometime.
May 18th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Yes, very neat, but like Supernova says: is there any reverse site or something that tells you what will come over when for your location? I mean, it’s cool enough to know ISS just swooped Kenya, but that’s about all the fun to be had of course.
May 18th, 2006 at 10:17 am
“Honey what the hell are you doing outside this time of night.”
“Don’t worry SuitStat is about to pass over and I didn’t want to miss it”
“What!?”
May 18th, 2006 at 10:20 am
http://www.heavens-above.com will give you satellite passes for your area. You need to enter your latitude and longitude. You can check for “local” satellites, and then go to the RTST site to see it go over you.
May 18th, 2006 at 10:22 am
This is an excellent site, thank you so much for sharing this link.
I’m going to try to find a satellite passing over my house and if I can see it, I’ll get the kids and show them; they’ll either think it’s way cool, or, I’ll just reconfirm I’m a total dork in their minds.
Either way, I’m good with it.
May 18th, 2006 at 10:39 am
I don’t know how many satellites I’ve seen while out in the wilds observing. Also, back in my youth (late 1950′s and early 1960′s) I remember seeing them when they were a rarity. I even saw ‘Echo’ while it was up.
May 18th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Sorry for the double post…
i found the Space Station… it’s called ISS.
May 18th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Sat-watch goes online…
Just get boring about bird-watch? All right, you could have a test drive of this: a real-time satellite tracking website (http://www.n2yo.com/). Phil Plait, who runs the Bad Astronomy website, described this fun stuff on his blog.Although n2yo.com is …
May 18th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Thanks BA..great site…Cloudy with rain in the area..hope to try it later!
May 18th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
NASA has been doing this for a while too. It doesn’t zoom as far in, but they have it in 3D!
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3d/JTrack3D.html
May 18th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Very dynamic – i love it!
May 18th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Napfisk sez:”Yes, very neat, but is there any reverse site or something that tells you what will come over when for your location?”
If your system is in the Google Maps database (and it is if you’ve downloaded it) you will see one of those push-pin things in your location. Up in the upper right is a button labeled “Next 48 hour passes for…” with the name of whatever satellite you are currently viewing. That will give you the passes for that vehicle at your location (a pass is any time the vehicle is more than 10 deg above your local horizon).
As others have mentioned, the Heavens Above site will give you the passes of everything from your location.
- Jack
May 18th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
NelC—I know windows active desktop used to have a map of the earth where you could add the day/night shadow, ISS, hubble, and many others. Not sure if they have it anymore. . . .
Ah yes, found it:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/previous/gallery/default.mspx
3rd one down, “J-Track Satellite Tracking”
It’s a bit better than a screensaver!
May 18th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
NelC–I know windows active desktop used to have a map of the earth where you could add the day/night shadow, ISS, hubble, and many others. Not sure if they have it anymore. . . .
Ah yes, found it:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/previous/gallery/default.mspx
3rd one down, “J-Track Satellite Tracking”
It’s a bit better than a screensaver!
May 18th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Ugh, sorry for the multiple posts, it kept giving me some sort of server error.
May 19th, 2006 at 3:14 am
This new sat track site is quite cool and I have added it to the others as a resource on my site.
I often plan ahead to catch Sats at public observing sessions at the Adler Planetarium and prepare the crowd for the appearance of the ISS/ Shuttle/Iridium sats. Many don’t realize how bright these objects are, and when it first makes it’s appearance, shouts and yells often are the norm. It’s amazing we can see these things in the muddy glare of Chicago’s light polluted skies.
Thanks for posting this new sat track link.
Chicago Astronomer Joe
May 19th, 2006 at 6:53 am
DO YOUREMEMBER THE STORY DAD USED TO TELL ABOUT THE TIME WE WERE IN TUCSON , [ 1959 I BELIEVE] SITTING WITH OTHER TRAVELERS IN THE COURTYARD OF OUR MOTEL WHEN WE LOOKED UP AND SAW SPUTNIK. TALK ABOUT EXCITEMENT?!!!!!!
May 19th, 2006 at 7:19 am
Hmmm…
As I figured, another “broadband required” site. Oh the tradeoffs of amateur astronomy. If I lived in town, I could go to all these cool sites, but couldn’t see the sky!
May 19th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Captain K: Verizon has a cost effective PC card that allows broadband access speeds and for a few thousand there’s always a sat link available. I hear the download speed with the sat is acceptable, but the upload is around 56Kb.
Gary 7
May 19th, 2006 at 9:02 am
Thanks for sharing that Phil, I haven’t seen that one before!
I’m always amazed that when I tell people that you can see the ISS pass over, they just say “No way! You can’t see that, it’s out in space!” I then point it out as it passes over and they are just amazed since they then realize that I’m right.
I’ve taken photos of the ISS with my telescope and webcam, check them out here on my web page – http://www.eastsideastro.org/observatory/spacecraft.html
I also do the opposite and look down at the earth from weather satellites. I have a simple radio connected to a computer in my basement that records, processes, and uploads images to the web automatically. See here:
http://home.comcast.net/~tegwilym/wxtoimg/
I just reinstalled the OS on that computer, so I’m still tweaking things to get the images looking better. You can pick up these NOAA satellits on a normal Radio Shack police scanner if you can receive 137 mhz. Google “APT reception” for more on this.
Tom
May 19th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Phil – It does so have Chandra – you just need to know its
catalog number, which is 25867. Then
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=25867
gives you Chandra.
Your friendly Chandra fan,
Jonathan
May 20th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Yeah, like Jonathan McDowell knows anything about satellites…