Do Satellites Blink In The Sky

If you ve looked up at the night sky recently you might have been surprised to see a train of bright lights moving.

Do satellites blink in the sky.

To do that the company will need to launch nearly 40 000 low orbit satellites in the next decade according to fox19 now meteorologist steve horstmeyer. People often ask us about flashes in the night sky and over the past 20 years many of those flashes turned out to be flares from communications satellites put into orbit by the iridium. What you will see is sunlight being reflected off the satellite often off the large solar arrays that provide power. In the middle of the night you can t see them.

The only times satellites are visible to the naked eye are around dusk and dawn when it is fairly dark but sunlight reflects off of them. Those end up looking more like bright stars if you see them at all. Most come with blue and red these days high intensity green leds are a bit more expensive to manufacture but some still do have red gre. Many satellites do not have a constant brightness they give off flashes at usually regular times.

If you see a moving blinking light in the sky at night it is most likely a plane. Planes however do have blinking lights. This flashing behavior is caused by the rotation of the satellite around its rotation axis. If the lights are blinking you probably are seeing a plane not a satellite.

Satellite flare also known as satellite glint is a satellite pass visible to the naked eye as a brief bright flare it is caused by the reflection toward the earth below of sunlight incident on satellite surfaces such as solar panels and antennas e g synthetic aperture radar. Currently there are just over 400. The satellite will look like a star steadily moving across the sky for a few minutes. The satellite s metallic surfaces act as mirrors for the sun specular reflection.