Satellite or shooting start below Saturn

[cpittman35]

Had an awesome sight tonight.  I had just gotten my scope set up and focused on Saturn with my 10mm Plossl when through the scope I see a satellite or shooting star cruising right below the planet from left to right. It wasn't visible with the naked eye. Talk about a cool experience for this noob. 

I'm leaning toward satellite just because of the straight line and no tail but then again I know nothing about this stuff  

[Dave In Vermont]

You'd be amazed at how many satellites there are up there. I'm often surprised if one doesn't go blinking past my eyepiece! And each and every one, and pieces of one's that fell apart, have to be tracked to steer them - or others nearby - away from one another by calculating their telemetry. It's very crowded up there.

If you're interested in finding them and identifying who is what, there are a number of free tracking-programs you can download and run. My favorite is Previsat. A Google search will find more, but I'll leave you a link for Previsat below.

Enjoy -

Dave

https://sourceforge.net/projects/previsat/

 

[kerrylewis]

Hello. I have seen both through the eyepiece but satellites, as Dave says, are far more common. Meteors  (shooting stars) are very fast due to the magnification- definitely not 'cruising', in fact afterwards you will wonder if you actually did see something! Some, but not all, will leave a trail.

Enjoy your observing  

[cpittman35]

Thanks Dave and Kerry.  I'm definitely interested in the site you provided.  I'll check it out.  It was really neat.  This was only my 4th time with the scope out, due to weather, so having clear views of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, the Moon were icing on the cake after seeing the satellite cruise by.  The moon is getting close to full and you don't realize how bright she is until you look through the eyepiece. 

It had to have been a satellite since it was just cruising by smoothly and not at super warp speed.  When I say no tail I mean not long like shooting star or meteorite.  It definitely had a small streamer behind it.