Tips viewing (and locating!) satellites

[foxesjon]

Hi guys, having great fun with my Dob since purchasing it, and have spent the cloudier nights researching my new hobby with the reccommended books and materials you guys suggested. One thing I am really not getting the hang of is how to spot satellites in the night sky. I log onto heavensabove and get the bearings etc. but these baffle me! Anyone got a dummies guide for me to start locating some of these orbits?

Kind regards,

FJ

[houston]

ISS Detector app gives the elevation in degrees and time of space station and any bright iridion flares from your location. Watched a few of these going past and timing and elevation have been spot on. Not easy following these in a dob for any length of time tho.

[Pyrodave]

Stellarium has a button to turn on satellites you can see where and at what time they will be visible

[ronin]

If you intend to use the scope it will be difficult, by the time you have popinted the scope at where you saw any they will have moved significantly.

To have a go put in a long focal length eyepiece, you will need all the field of view you can get.

To just see them then sit outside - try a sun bed - and simply look around fairly slowly, maybe have a set of binoculara to hand.

Only with the ISS might you see any structure.

[David Galvin]

I log onto heavensabove and get the bearings etc. but these baffle me!

Kind regards,

FJ

Do you mean that you are struggling with the concept of Altitude and Azimuth or actually finding them in the telescope?

Where about in the North West are you based?

[helicalwave]

From my location in Central London, I am lucky to see stars, but it seems I am always seeing satellites. If I spend any time at all looking up, I will quickly stumble across one or two or three. ISS is hard to miss. I tried to follow last Saturday's ISS flyover with my no-drive EQ5 and realised with my spotting scope, there was no way I was ever going to get close to it before it was gone. I am going to get a telrad, but I think even with that I am never going to catch up with it.

[LukeSkywatcher]

There's no big secret really. Just sit outside looking up and after a few mins your eyes will start detecting the slightest movement in the sky. Some are very faint and really hard to detect while others are brighter (still faint) and more easily detected.