[oakashes]

This website is incredible. It blew my mind when I realized it was showing a star map superimposed on a street view image of our actual location.

A question from a very inexperienced stargazer - we went outside to look at the Starlink constellation that was passing overhead, and in the five minutes we spent looking for it, we couldn't see anything moving on that trajectory but did make out three apparent satellites moving on different trajectories, satellites apparently not known to the web app. Is that plausible or is it more likely we were mistaking airplanes or imagining things?

[modeless]

Thanks! It's plausible that you might not see predicted satellites and very plausible that you would see extra ones. Predicting satellite visibility is very difficult because it depends on unknown factors like the shape and BDRF and precise orientation of each satellite. My site necessarily uses a simplified model, which will sometimes be wrong in both directions. There will be many visible satellites in the sky that aren't shown on the site, and some that are shown on the site may end up not being visible after all.

For a guarantee of visibility look for satellites marked "bright" in the UI (which will usually be ISS or Tiangong). For a more comprehensive catalog of satellites that may or may not be visible, check out sites like https://www.heavens-above.com/.

[mihaaly]

In a period last (or previous?) winter I chased sattelites based on this great page and concerning starlinks I only had luck with using a monocular (or binocular of course). Perhaps partly because my eyesight is not that sharp as it was in childhood and also this area is moderately light polluted. I only have a 8x magnification monocular (lower would be better) which made the chase of the moving stream of satellites difficult but equally exciting and spectacular. It is a bit of luck catching the satellites through the lens (in which the page helps tremendously showing where to look in real time), the magnification amplifies the speed in front of the stars and consequently the observation turns into a high speed chase. Occasionally I seen slow moving, lone, bright ones with the naked eye but those were boring compared to the high speed chasing of a stream of elusive dots. : )