Watching for the Starlink satellite train

Long exposure of Starlink Satellites over London

If you live in the UK, it’s worth watching the sky around 10ish most evenings this week, as there should be a fine display of Starlink satellites. These have been launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company with the intention of providing high speed internet to planet Earth. They are launched in bunches of 60 and have yet to spread out, so are grouped together in a line.

So if you are watching, you can see them fly across the sky one after another, and each one looks like relatively bright star that is moving. If you take a photograph over time you can see a series of tracks, as in the photo above. It’s quite a sight - they seem to keep coming and coming, and some people call them a train of satellites.

To find out when they will be overhead, try the web site FindStarlink (you might have to put in your own location) or follow one of the amateur astronomers on Twitter such as VirtualAstro. It is also worth checking the weather and how clear the sky will be, such as the ClearOutside web site.

There are a lot of interesting photos on Twitter and a number of stories in the media, such as this one on the BBC News Site.