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Low Earth Orbit Visualization

platform.leolabs.space

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Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#81

Post by mlindner »

ahazred8ta wrote: post #34
nerdponx wrote: post #2

I don't really know what I'm looking at here, but it feels very sci-fi and I'm into it. I also wonder, how do they track so many objects? Who actually tracks them? How much does it cost (energy, engineers) to maintain the tracking systems? Edit: Are these all simulated orbits? Is there a big "orbit registry" somewhere? And what are the "beams"?

Is there a big orbit registry somewhere? Yes. https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/osoindex/search-ng.jspx Each individual object is observed every few weeks, and then they estimate its current position with math and physics. How do they track them? With big expensive radar systems, mostly paid for by the military. It's an international collaboration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_domain_awareness#Systems

LEOlabs operates and pays for their own radars. They're a commercial company.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#83

Post by flavmartins »

modeless wrote: post #31
ubj wrote: post #28

Those long, straight-line convoys of Starlink satellites are fascinating. There's a few of them I could see scattered around the Earth. At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated orbits? Looking forward to using this website to try spotting satellites at night. There's something strangely thrilling about seeing objects in the night sky that were placed there by people.

For spotting satellites at night, try my site: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ Most of the satellites shown on the Leolabs site are too dim to see without a telescope because they don't reflect enough light. My site calculates brightness and filters down to the ones that you can see with the unaided eye. There are still quite a few! ISS in particular is very bright and can even be seen before sunset. The new…

Fantastic site!

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#84

Post by rmorey »

modeless wrote: post #31
ubj wrote: post #28

Those long, straight-line convoys of Starlink satellites are fascinating. There's a few of them I could see scattered around the Earth. At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated orbits? Looking forward to using this website to try spotting satellites at night. There's something strangely thrilling about seeing objects in the night sky that were placed there by people.

For spotting satellites at night, try my site: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ Most of the satellites shown on the Leolabs site are too dim to see without a telescope because they don't reflect enough light. My site calculates brightness and filters down to the ones that you can see with the unaided eye. There are still quite a few! ISS in particular is very bright and can even be seen before sunset. The new…

This is really well done, I will try it out tonight!

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#85

Post by matheusmoreira »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #3

I’ve played kerbal space program for over 500 hours and I can confirm LEO looks like this in my game.

That's impressive but is your processor alright? PS4 Pro nearly catches fire trying to simulate one modular space station.

Do you know if there's been any news on KSP2? At this point I'm not sure it will ever happen.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#86

Post by kidme5 »

ubj wrote: post #28

Those long, straight-line convoys of Starlink satellites are fascinating. There's a few of them I could see scattered around the Earth. At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated orbits? Looking forward to using this website to try spotting satellites at night. There's something strangely thrilling about seeing objects in the night sky that were placed there by people.

Looks familiar...(!)

https://youtu.be/fEkXTV69yo4?t=22s

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#88

Post by rzimmerman »

geenew wrote: post #41

This made me look up a link to my old favourite for this kind of thing, CelesTrak.org . Unfortunately, they discontinued their visualizer due to licensing problems. For posterity, this was the tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC90GyHMabk The announcement is here: https://twitter.com/CelesTrak/status/1547264390650527744 For now, the person behind it's got a (informative) error message showing up: https://cele…

The ask comes from T.S. Kelso who is well regarded in the orbit tracking/space debris field. He's done a lot of important work making this information public and a lot of public good for collision avoidance. If it's important to you feel free to offer support! It's not clear to me he's asking for money, probably just help and time.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#89

Post by chroma »

hammock wrote: post #63

How do you launch a satellite without risking running into one of these things on the way up? Do you have to calculate the trajectories of all of them individually?

Regarding launching and collisions: You mostly don't have to worry about it. The visualization makes space look crowded, but each satellite is over 150,000 times smaller than what is visualized. Space is very very big and very very empty. LEO is bigger than the surface of the earth and dozens of times thicker than the earth's crust.

It only takes a few radar stations to track all the satellites, and the US Space Force makes their data public.[1][2] Most satellites don't have much in the way of maneuvering capabilities, so you don't need continuous tracking, just updates every few days or so.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...

2. https://www.space-track.org/documentation#api

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#90

Post by 101008 »

modeless wrote: post #31
ubj wrote: post #28

Those long, straight-line convoys of Starlink satellites are fascinating. There's a few of them I could see scattered around the Earth. At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated orbits? Looking forward to using this website to try spotting satellites at night. There's something strangely thrilling about seeing objects in the night sky that were placed there by people.

For spotting satellites at night, try my site: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ Most of the satellites shown on the Leolabs site are too dim to see without a telescope because they don't reflect enough light. My site calculates brightness and filters down to the ones that you can see with the unaided eye. There are still quite a few! ISS in particular is very bright and can even be seen before sunset. The new…

Wow. I allowed Chrome to know my location for the first time and Street View was in my front door. I thought it was going to use the IP but it's impossible to be that accurate, does it Chrome use my Home on my profile location or something like that?
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