Wjolcz Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 (edited) 7 hours ago, sevenperforce said: We asked a lot of people and they were stumped Great source. Case closed. 4 hours ago, tater said: I'm probably going to sound fanboi-ish, but I really like how they handled it. Really appreciate the "we talked to people and tried fixing the problem" approach without/before being forced by the UN or some other government or law. It's just nice. Edited January 15, 2020 by Wjolcz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 So heavensabove shows a pass in about 50 minutes. Celestrak shows one in an hour and 45 minutes. I'll look at 6:40 and see what gives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 Not tight any more. Spread out a few degrees between them (4-5?) Went a long time, lost count, easily naked eye. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brotoro Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 (edited) Tonight's pass must have have had a better sun angle for illuminating the satellites, since I saw many more of them naked eye (with magnitude between 2.5 and 2.0). I think this is because they were passing between me and the sun, so I got forward bounced reflection, as opposed to yesterday when it was more side or back bounce). Spotted the first on at 6:42 PM, leading the others by quite a bit (and it was a bright one). the main string showed up at 6:44 PM, and it had maybe a couple dozen naked eye brightness satellites spaced out in a very pretty string (pretty if you are in the whole "mankind conquering the skies" camp, and less so if you are in the "mankind is destroying the natural beauty of the sky" camp). I did not see as many dim satellites as last night (using my binoculars)... but there were hazy cloud bands that were messing with me. I didn't make a good count tonight, since I was more interested in the naked eye view of the long string of lights through Pegasus. They were all gone into Earth's shadow by 6:52 PM. (The app Voice Clock on the iPhone is great...it calls out the time for me every minute so I don't have to look away from the show.) Edited January 15, 2020 by Brotoro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 Good idea on the time stamp thing, I should try that. They went into shadow roughly N for me as they moved to the E (maybe a little W of N---for me due N is on the other side of the Sandias). I had the same issue with clouds. I wish I could have located the binos, I put them somewhere and misplaced them, and didn't think to look before, so I had no time to look (went to grab them as I went outside, no dice). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 @Brotoro, I noticed they were fairly evenly spaced, but with one obvious gap (they were about a hand width apart, except one 2X gap). Did you see that as well? Wonder if that's the dark one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brotoro Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 The ones that were showing up naked eye were fairly evenly spaced, yes. There were dimmer satellites in the gaps visible in the binoculars...but not as well as last night. I don't know if the haze was to blame or if the satellites are in different orientations in some systematic way. Wednesday's pass is low, so I won't bother with it. The pass on Thursday is high overhead...but the time is an hour earlier, so I don't know how well they'll show up in the twilight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 9 minutes ago, Brotoro said: The ones that were showing up naked eye were fairly evenly spaced, yes. There were dimmer satellites in the gaps visible in the binoculars...but not as well as last night. I don't know if the haze was to blame or if the satellites are in different orientations in some systematic way. Wednesday's pass is low, so I won't bother with it. The pass on Thursday is high overhead...but the time is an hour earlier, so I don't know how well they'll show up in the twilight. Low West is OK for me (foothills), but the better pass is Thursday---except it's supposed to be snowing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brotoro Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 Ah, yes. I didn't check the forecast. Three to five inches of snow up in the Jemez. I think I'm screwed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 One of the saving graces for Starlink, at least presently, is that they are fairly low-altitude. The lower the satellite, the shorter the period that it is illuminated at night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wjolcz Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 (edited) I just redownloaded the Heavens Above app and it has a nice timewarp feature that shows at least some of the Starlink sats. Not sure how accurately since they keep changing their orbits. Edited January 15, 2020 by Wjolcz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 34 minutes ago, Wjolcz said: I just redownloaded the Heavens Above app and it has a nice timewarp feature that shows at least some of the Starlink sats. Not sure how accurately since they keep changing their orbits. Worked for me perfectly last night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 On 1/14/2020 at 7:40 PM, sevenperforce said: Last night I saw a string of 12 unidentified lights passing our house in formation How should the people now distinguish it from UFO? Spoiler Wait... That's their real purpose. A worldwide UFO tracking network, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinimumSky5 Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 On 1/14/2020 at 4:40 PM, sevenperforce said: Funny exchange on my Medium blog: While The X-Files was a great TV show, it has a lot to answer for in how it altered peoples perceptions of possible extraterrestrials. That being said, I'm on the extreme sceptic side of the Fermi Paradox, so maybe I'm a little biased! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnemoe Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 5 hours ago, kerbiloid said: How should the people now distinguish it from UFO? Hide contents Wait... That's their real purpose. A worldwide UFO tracking network, Well if they follow the starlink deployment trajectory they are starlink satellites making them both identified and not flying as they are in orbit. There I lived before I saw far more than 12 moving lights in the sky each night. Yes it was close to an airport However they was flying and I could not identify them just by the lights making them unidentified flying objects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silavite Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 On 1/14/2020 at 10:40 AM, sevenperforce said: Funny exchange on my Medium blog: A bit off-topic, but I cannot resist sharing this gem Spoiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 Feynman is always on topic, IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RCgothic Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 (edited) Remember how flight MH 370 disappeared after losing contact with land stations? Connecting airliners to Starlink means that need never happen again. Edited January 16, 2020 by RCgothic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 19 minutes ago, RCgothic said: Remember how flight MH 370 disappeared after losing contact with land stations? Connecting airliners to Starlink means that need never happen again. Well, the pilot deciding to murder everyone (MH370) means he doesn't bother trying to communicate, or turns it off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 Well, they'd at least know more or less exactly where the plane crashed. Starlink connection would mean the GPS coordinates could be transfered as long as the transmitted is intact (there's no real need to give the pilot control over that). Indeed, if a minimal Starlink transmitter could be crammed into a black box, that would, in some cases, aid in recovering it quickly. It wouldn't need to receive data, just transmit it. Also, CVR and FDR could potentially upload the things they record in real time (though it would have to be automatically deleted after a while for both privacy and storage space reasons, especially the former), meaning any damage to black boxes would sustain in the crash wouldn't affect the data that already got uploaded. I'd caution against relying entirely on this, but this would be a great improvement over the current situation, where this data is often partially lost after a crash. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnemoe Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 On 1/16/2020 at 5:11 PM, Silavite said: A bit off-topic, but I cannot resist sharing this gem Hide contents LOL, On the other hand its an definition question. The targets in sheet shooting is in practice saucers and they are flying. However if you are into sheet shooting you can say how many flying saucers you shot down with an shotgun today Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 skeet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 LOL at "sheet shooting". By the way: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 21 hours ago, Dragon01 said: (there's no real need to give the pilot control over that) No, this is not correct. There is need to give the pilots control over every electrical system on the airplane, because just possibly they may need to turn them off in order to prevent electrical hazard. The only ones they can't turn off are those that are entirely self-contained, like the emergency locator beacons which are supposed to start transmitting in the case of a crash (but don't always, because the assumption is that the crash is benign enough that maybe somebody survived it). It would be a complete shift in the pilot/airplane paradigm to have systems on board that the pilot actually can't turn off. This may be the future. Indeed, pilotless airplanes may be the future. But for now, ultimately, usually for better but sometimes for worse, the pilot can shut off anything. In the case of MH370 it appears the pilot shut off everything he knew about, but it seems he didn't know that there was a routine ping/handshake from ACARS every hour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 17, 2020 Share Posted January 17, 2020 36 minutes ago, mikegarrison said: By the way: Let's hope this doesn't give Elon ideas for the next "not a flamethrower" gun-like device... (anyone who has seen the movie will know what I'm talking about) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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