Observing Starlink(s) in the sky

[lajoswinkler]

The first one took several days for us to finally get predictions, and by that time they drifted apart and are obviously a lot less easy to see with naked eye right now.

They're still relatively close, at least some parts of the "train".

https://heavens-above.com/StarLink.aspx

Post your observations here.

[Brotoro]

I have watched three passes so far.

The first was on Sunday, May 26, at around 9:35 PM. The predicted path was within two degrees of zenith, and I have fairly dark skies. I was using 7x30 binoculars (and my wife was also watching naked eye). The first Starlink satellites I spotted were rising through Eridanus, and they were pretty dim. They also were rapidly changing in brightness, occasionally getting brighter and dimmer erratically. It was hard to track them as they headed toward the handle of the Big Dipper. But then my wife spotted the main pack rising past Denebola in Leo, which was a few minutes behind the dim leaders that I had been following. That big pack had three bright ones easily visible naked eye (which had fairly steady brightness), and with binoculars I could see a lot of dimmer ones in line with them. I counted about 30 in that group. Some stragglers followed after, with only one of them being easily visible naked eye.

The second pass I watched was on Monday, May 27. This was earlier in the day (around 8:50 PM), and the sky was still pretty light from twilight. Also, the satellites were not passing as high in the sky (around 50 degrees), so they were further away. I only saw one satellite that was visible naked eye, and the rest were even difficult in the binoculars. So...best to see these things when it is darkest.

The third pass I saw was Wednesday, May 29, at around 4:30 AM. The predictions were for the leaders to come over about one degree from zenith, but the trailers weren't going to pass until 20 minutes later and would only reach about 50 degrees from zenith. The sky was partly cloudy, and was getting hazier near the end of the pass (and twilight was creeping in as well by then). I spotted the leaders passing the handle of the Big Dipper with binoculars on time, again quite dim and irregular in brightness. The first large pack passed high overhead through the Summer Triangle, and although it contained three or four that were naked eye brightness, they were only about 4th magnitude (judging from stars in Lyra). The trailing pack had two that were bright and steady, around 2nd magnitude (judging from stars), although they weren't passing as high overhead. I couldn't see other satellites well in that pack because the sky was getting quite hazy as twilight brightened.

I guess the thing that surprised me the most in watching these satellites was how fast their orbit path shifts across the sky (one doesn't normally get to see this effect because you don't get to see long strings of satellites in the same orbit). I knew that the Earth rotates beneath the orbital plane at about 15 degrees per hour, so you might expect the path to shift at that sort of rate... But being that these satellites are in low orbit, your angle of view toward the orbit path moves quite fast as the groups pass overhead (shifting about 40 degrees over 20 minutes when it's near zenith). So be aware of this when watching for later satellites...they will not be following the same path across the sky (and the shift will be larger the higher up they are).

I found it very useful to have a speaking clock app that would tell me the time every minute while watching the passes (since looking at your phone to see the time can ruin your dark vision). The free app I found for this on my iPhone was called VoiceClock.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Brotoro