Qwick question about satellites

[Dean bailey]

How many satellites should you see with in hour and half?

I'm pure beginner so new to astronamy really, was out the other night around 9pm to around 10.30pm and I saw around 6 satellites with in the hour an half, do they just look like moving stars?

Please don't laugh at me as like I said, just a pure beginner asking pure beginner questions, sorry haha.

[gkec]

Yes they do look like moving stars but they tend to appear to  disappear when they enter the Earth's shadow.  The time period you mention is at about dusk which is the optimum time to see satellites.  Six in 90 minutes is not particularly unusual at that time. 

[Dave In Vermont]

You're not seeing things, my friend. There are so many up there that their actual count is a state-secret. To sum it up: It's a flying-junkyard up there.

Here's a link to a very good stand-alone satellite finder & tracking software program. It's totally free. Just enter your data and remember to update the TLE's (telemetry) for the satellites you wish to know about. If you check-off ALL of them, I doubt you'd be able to see the map! It would be utterly clogged-up:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/previsat/

I track the ISS/Zarya (International Space Station), the Hubble-Telescope, and the SMAP satellite. Many people like looking for Iridium-Flares:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare

These can be fun to watch. Or, if one doesn't know what they are seeing, send people running down the street while screaming "The Aliens Are Coming!! HELP!!"

Have Fun,

Dave

[Dean bailey]

Thank you very much for the replys, and I laughed when the guy called little green man above in the comment says its like a flying junk yard hahaha..

Yeah thanks for replys, Decent forum this forum, I love reading threw it, do more reading than commenting tho,.. take care guys

[alan potts]

Dean,

I have a really dark site site and it is not unusual to see 6 in 5 minutes as well as 6 aircraft above me is like a motorway for them.

Alan

[ronin]

There are thousands of them up there, many are small and not seen but still a lot that are big enough.

General estimates are 20,000 to 30,000 satellites. Somewhere a couple of days back one person said 23,000.

If you ever go serious imaging (getting LONG exposures) one option is to wrap up well, take a foldable camp bed lie on it and simply rest there looking up counting them. You can do that in any case but better if semi-warm evenings/nights.

Also there is this "deal" whereby if you have a "Kube" satellite = 10x10x10cm, then they may get taken up free on a rocket and basically booted out. Many universties etc are taking advantage of this scheme/offer so there will be an increase in the number of them. Hopefully too small to be seen. No idea of their orbit life before they reenter but I bet they make good meteor's as they drop back.

[wxsatuser]

There are more than 21000 objects larger than 10cms in orbit.

Only a small portion of these are operational satellites and there is an estimate that overall

there could be 500000 bits of junk up there, most way to small to see, 10cms is the smallest trackable object , AFAIK

[Dom1961]

Most satellites have orbit periods of 90 mins so you probably saw six different satellites during that time, however I could be wrong as some satellites travel a bit faster