Satellite crossing the moon

[sidwemn]

Hi,

I'm relatively new to Astronomy, although I have had an interest for a number of years. I'm a keen birder, and have often gazed at the skies using my birdwatching binoculars and telescope.

At Christmas, I got my first proper astronomy telescope, a Meade ETX125PE. I've spent the first few months getting to grips with it's use and feel I'm starting to get the hang of it, and am now getting fairly accurate and consistant Goto's. I've now started working through the Messier lists and Lunar 100 as a way of getting to know my way around the moon.

I've been reading SGL for a while, but and event last night promped this, my first post.

At 8.55pm last night I was searching for L47, the Alphonsus dark spots when a tiny object appeared in my view. I quickly realised that this was a satellite, perfectly sillouetted against the moon. I could clearly see a central rectangle with a rounded lobe at each side. It took just 5 or 6 seconds to transect the moon heading approximately from south to north. After it cleared the moon I quickly checked with my binoculars, but it was obviously in the earths shadow as there was no sign of a glow. It found this a very exiting sight.

Does this happen often or was this a very lucky fluke?

Regards

Martyn

[Cloudwatcher]

Hi,Martyn and welcome to the Forum.

I have seen the odd aircraft briefly cross the field of view when looking at the Moon and of course plenty of satellites that appear as bright spots of light but nothing along the lines you have described....... it must have been traveling very slowly to have remained in the FOV for some five seconds.......... so no idea what it could be I'm afraid.

[GazOC]

Its pretty rare, I saw a sattelite cross a gobluar cluster last year and that was amazing.

[Dave]

It does happen reasonably often.

There's a great image of the ISS against the Moon on SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids at the moment.

If you go to http://www.calsky.com/cs.cgi/ you can enter your details and it will E Mail you if an event is due from your location.

There are also many other things it will calculate and warn you about as well.

Very useful.

Dave

[GazOC]

True Dave, I suppose if you are looking out for it and know when to look, but I've never been lucky enough to see it happen by "chance" whilst observing the moon.

[Ant]

Last time I saw a satellite in the FOV while observing it made me jump!

Ever seen one last five seconds... The ones I've seen have been maybe a second in duration.

But it depends on the FOV and satellite I guess.

Welcome to SGL.

Ant

[Andrew*]

Actually, I find they are sometimes very slow, but usually these ones are faint, and probably wouldn't be very bright or large against the moon's surface.

Is there a way you can find out to sufficient accuracy whether a satellite will cross an object of interest? I mean, with data from Heaven's Above, you can't really tell if it will cross the moon, for example.

Andrew

[The Warthog]

I haven't seen a satellite cross the Moon, but seeing a satellite in the FOV is a fairly common occurence. I was observing a Pleiades occultation one fall night during the warbler migration, and saw dozens of these tiny birds cross the face of the Moon.