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Interesting Items...

hairy_mutley said:
Yes, it seemed to suddenly get brighter as it got to overhead.
Heavens Above says it will be brighter tomorrow night.
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I only saw it when right above because I got distracted by another satellite which I first thought is the vehicle, it came from wsw. by the time I gave a shout out in the house I saw it right above. I got a couple of pics as well.

and now just to calm down went and saw one of the yesterday's old ones, very difficult to see, so much less brighter. amazing what a difference mag 1.8 to 2.4 is.
 
Struggling to spot any of the old ones tonight, they just don't stand out despite the sky now being dark. The new one really stood out despite the sky not being fully dark.
 
The Heaven's Above predictions are up for tonight, 60 satellites in a span of just 23 seconds. That's more like it!

For Severn Estuary area: Start time 20h53m53s BST, WSW to ESE, greatest elevation 71° SSW (Cancer/Lynx) That area is devoid of prominent stars, look in the area surrounded by Castor & Pollux (the twin stars of Gemini), Regulus (the brightest star in the Sickle of Leo), and Dubhe (the brightest star in The Plough).

The further east or south you are, the closer the track gets to Polaris (the Pole Star). For the Suffolk coast the track passes between Gemini and Auriga, and close to the Pointers between The Plough and Polaris.

I can only hope for a decent sky, but the typical pattern in a high pressure situation is for clear skies to start with but then becoming increasingly murky. Under normal circumstances I would check weather satellite cloud cover photos and drive to a better location (typically the coast or the Brecon Beacons Dark Sky site. My limiting magnitude was about 2.5 last night (in clearer patches) - Polaris is about mag 2, the stars in the Plough go from 1.7 to 3.3 (and I could only see six).

Re last night: I'm not really bothered. Seen the ISS, seen Iridium flares, meteor showers, comets, transits, total solar eclipse...
 
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Black Hole said:
The Heaven's Above predictions are up for tonight, 60 satellites in a span of just 23 seconds. That's more like it!

For Severn Estuary area: Start time 20h53m53s BST, WSW to ESE, greatest elevation 71° SSW (Cancer/Lynx) That area is devoid of prominent stars, look in the area surrounded by Castor & Pollux (the twin stars of Gemini), Regulus (the brightest star in the Sickle of Leo), and Dubhe (the brightest star in The Plough).

The further east or south you are, the closer the track gets to Polaris (the Pole Star). For the Suffolk coast the track passes between Gemini and Auriga, and close to the Pointers between The Plough and Polaris.
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wtf are you talking about?

the track goes nowhere near polaris or ursa major or any of what you said.

it goes right past venus which is the FIRST thing you should have mentioned

no wonder you can't see anything
 
So f*****g reactionary as usual. Get a star chart out, and look at the actual track. I've been doing astronomy since I was 12, so I do know what I'm looking at and how to look.

BTW: Venus is mag -4.7. Being able to see Venus is no guarantee that the seeing* is good enough to see StarLink satellites at mag 0.9 or 1.9. Being able to see Polaris at mag 2 is a very good indication your seeing is good enough.

* The term we astronomers use for the sky quality.
 
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absolutely. God knows what he is looking at.
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His own bit of the sky ?

Compared to the stars / planets these things are very close to us, because of this where they appear in the sky will vary a lot more than anything else depending which bit of the UK you are viewing from, therefore I am guessing BH, mihaid and HM are all correct on this occasion
 
Ezra Pound said:
His own bit of the sky ?

Compared to the stars / planets these things are very close to us, because of this where they appear in the sky will vary a lot more than anything else depending which bit of the UK you viewing from, therefore I am guessing BH, mihaid and HM all correct on this occasion
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wrong. he's definitely wrong about the Suffolk coast.

not to say that he failed to see all the events posted here.
 
Could have been okay if there was no murk. Apart from Venus, the only star I could see around 9pm was Arcturus, and then I spotted Castor & Pollux at 9.03. Otherwise: sweet pollux.
 
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That's the nature of observing transient phenomena: you win some, you lose some. All the ducks have to line up at the same time (in this case: be within a certain distance of the ground track and at a favourable angle for reflected sunlight; at the right time of day so the sky isn't too light but not so late that the objects are not eclipsed; and favourable weather). It can take persistence, expectation management, and not to expect instant gratification.

My neighbours saw the Monday passage, when I was late back from Bristol and probably missed it, but they agree the weather hasn't been good enough here since.

Take the 1999 Total Solar Eclipse: I'd been waiting for that for years (decades, even), and on the actual day the weather was (as we know)... crap. I actually saw it, because I had the fortune to be on an eclipse-watching ferry trip out in the Channel, and the boat was able to move a bit to find the best conditions. I compiled my keep-sake photo from video frames - I might be able to do a better job of that now, I must have a go:

BIG_D.jpg
 
I had decent seeing on the 25th (for a change), so went out to see what I could. One bright dot went across, pretty much on the expected trajectory. I had a camera taking a succession of 8s exposures at ISO 400, but the moving target didn't leave a trail whereas the (relatively) stationary stars did. For that reason, I had dismissed the exposures as of no use.

However, taking another look before deleting them, I found this:

Screenshot from 2020-05-02 19-21-24.png

The three stars in an elongated triangle near top left (I believe) are theta, iota, and kappa Ursae Majoris.

So, what's the streak? It must have been very bright to get recorded, and I didn't see it visually (might not have been looking in the right place at the right time). Maybe an Iridium flare.
 
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