Anyone else seen the Starlink satellites?

This weekend I went up to a rallycross in the northern part of NY with a friend, and afterwards we were outside talking at his house. He just happened to be looking up and goes "Uhhhhh, Nick, are you seeing that?" and points to a couple dots of light, the same size and brightness as stars moving in a line across the sky and making absolutely no noise. I confirm that either he is not insane or we're both identically insane, and we start watching them and counting. We ended up counting fifteen of them, and were left kind of scratching our heads over what we just witnessed. Did some searching later and the "fifteen" part ended up being key to identifying that it was a group of Starlink satellites. 

Yep, we saw them about a month ago. Pretty cool.

I haven't seen them myself (mostly because I haven't looked) but people in my office have.

Anyone want to educate me on what the hell Starlink satellites are?

It is pretty eerie if you don't know what you're looking at. After I figured it out I've watched quite a few and it's still eerie

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Anyone want to educate me on what the hell Starlink satellites are?

Elon's satellite internet service.

chandler said:

It is pretty eerie if you don't know what you're looking at. After I figured it out I've watched quite a few and it's still eerie

Yeah, we're looking and we're going "Well, it's not airplanes because you wouldn't have them all on the exact same heading, path and altitude. Is it aliens? Did war kick off and those are ICBMs inbound?"

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

They are very small satellites (many times called cube sats), launched in groups (60 ish?) that create a string of satellites orbiting in a rather low orbit.  The idea is to essentially create a continuous dome of satellite coverage so that a receiver can get signals from numerous satellites at a time (for redundancy), similar to GPS satellites (but numerous satellites contacts are not needed like GPS). 

Think of them as thousands of long range WiFi boxes, that you could connect to from almost anywhere on earth.

Amazon is also planning on creating their own network of satellites.  SpaceX clearly has an advantage by owning the most affordable launch system, but Amazon obviously has piles of money.

Orbital delivery:

What they can look like (they will eventually spread out a bit).  

They're pretty cool but they're playing hell with earth-based astronomy, along with all of the rest of the increasing number of satellites being launched.

I definitely saw them about 2 years ago one early morning while out walking the dog...was probably 5am-ish. This was before this was a well known phenomena. I saw the first one and thought "oh cool, a satellite" . Then came another. And a third. Evenly spaced, moving in unison

By number 4, I was pretty certain we were either being invaded by small green monsters or Russia had decided that was the day. I literally ran inside, woke up SWMBO and told her to get dressed as I tossed my go bag into the back of the car. She was having none of it lol...

I guess due to their north-eastward movement and it being just before dawn, the panels were reflecting just right and I was catching them as they passed out of the Earths shadow into the morning sun. Freaked me the freak out...

I have a free app called SkyView.  Pretty cool.

I've managed to catch sight of them once, it's pretty cool to see.

And our shop uses Starlink as a backup ISP (our only network options are a dodgy fixed microwave link, DSL, cellular or satellite) so I like having them up there.

We saw them 2 nights in a row over the weekend after sunset. We counted 22-24. Pretty cool to watch, but it's definitely pissing off my astronomer friends. Can't wait til there are thousands, right?

They are supposed to have new ones that are lower reflectivity to help with the astronomy issue.  Of course, around sunrise or sunset you will still likely see them when they are in the sun.

SpaceX dark coating successfully cuts Starlink satellite reflectivity

By applying a dark coating to one of its Starlink satellites, SpaceX has been able to cut its satellite’s apparent brightness in half, according to the results of a new study. The research suggests that applying the coating to more satellites could help lessen their impact on delicate telescope observations of the night sky....

https://newatlas.com/space/spacex-starlink-satellite-reflectivity-astronomy/

llysgennad said:

We saw them 2 nights in a row over the weekend after sunset. We counted 22-24. Pretty cool to watch, but it's definitely pissing off my astronomer friends. Can't wait til there are thousands, right?

IIRC they're mostly visible when they're moving into position. That's the only time you'll see a train, at least.

As for thousands - there are about 5000 of them up there now. And they've been equipped with various visibility mitigation methods for a few years now. The ones being launched now (since February) are brighter on the way to their orbit, but about 1/5th as visible once they get there.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Yes, that's when we get to see them with the naked eye. But the "darkening" on current and 2.0 is still experimental, and only affects the reflected light. SpaceX may launch up to 42,000, and OneWeb and Amazon are just getting started. I think it's going to be an issue for earth-based observation.

They're super neat to see -- I've seen 3 trains of them now, twice on purpose and one as a happy accident while out camping -- but it makes me worry about the future of astronomical photography, given the increasing amount of reflective orbital items around the globe. Even with brightness-mitigation tactics, is it a sustainable thing that will allow us to preserve ground-based astronomy? 

I took these last nigh with SkyView.  The Space Station and the Hubble are not in my dining room, just below the horizon.  Took another screen shot a few hours later.

Yes, I saw it while camping.  Absolutely incredible to see.