The night of last Thursday, May 23, SpaceX, the space company of Elon Musk, deployed the first 60 satellites of its ambitious StarLink project, with which they seek to create a huge broadband satellite internet network for everyone.
Within minutes of this deployment, several enthusiasts began to track the satellites in order to try to see the show in the sky, but only a few succeeded. One of them was the Dutch doctor and astronomer Marco Langbroek, who not only found them in the sky, but also captured them on video to the delight of all.
A fascinating train of satellites at 440 km altitude
As part of this first launch, the satellites were deployed one after the other in order to monitor their signals, connections with each other and their Krypton ion engine, so that right now the 60 satellites are a kind of star train circling to Earth again and again.
Langbroek explains that the skywatching community developed tools to calculate the position of the satellites so that they can be found in different regions of the world. In the case of Langbroek, the satellites passed through Leiden, Holland, some 22.5 hours after they were launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. He himself calculated the orbit and was prepared with his camera, although these appeared three minutes earlier than expected.
This is what Langbroek described:
"It all started with two weak, flickering objects moving in the field of vision, then, a few dozen seconds later, my jaw dropped to the ground as the 'train' entered the field of vision." I could not help but shout, 'OAAAAAAAH !!!! ' (followed by a few expletives ...). "
Langbroek recorded the video with a WATEC 902H camera, which is used for surveillance tasks being designed to capture in low light conditions, which was equipped with a Canon FD 50mm f / 1.8 lens. Langbroek counted at least 56 bright objects in the sky.
He also explained that the "train" of satellites will make between 2 and 3 trips on Earth each night, and that with the passage of time each satellite will be placed in its assigned orbit.
Langbroek was not the only one to capture this special "train". Marcin Łoboz, in Poland, met street-level satellites without any special equipment, since they are so bright that only the sky needs to be clear.
In fact, due to this, in some regions of the world there were reports of alleged UFO sightings. Today we know that they were StarLink satellites.
How to search StarLink satellites in the sky
Now, if we want to try our luck and see the StarLink satellites with our own eyes, we will only have to enter this web, which is a tool that calculates the orbit according to each geographical location. This makes it possible that just by putting our location (country and city) or coordinates, show us the date and time in which the satellites will pass so we can see them.
This website also offers us details such as the current location of the satellites as well as recommendations to see them in the sky, likewise, it anticipates us when it will not be possible to see them even though they are right above us, since the reflection of sunlight may not be enough for them to be visible.