Satellite spotters

John Schwartz reports in today's New York Times about the global community of "satellite spotter" hobbyists who track the heavenly motions of satellites -- some of which are secret government projects -- and share what they find online:

Thousands of people form the spotter community. Many look for historical relics of the early space age, working from publicly available orbital information. Others watch for phenomena like the distinctive flare of sunlight glinting off bright solar panels of some telephone satellites. Still others are drawn to the secretive world of spy satellites, with about a dozen hobbyists who do most of the observing, Mr. Molczan said.

In the case of the mysterious satellite that is about to plunge back to earth, Mr. Molczan had an early sense of which one it was, identifying it as USA-193, which gave out shortly after reaching space in December 2006. It is said to have been built by the Lockheed Martin Corporation and operated by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office.

One of those satellites may be visible to folks in New York City on Friday. Link to the full story, and here's a related item on the NYT "Lede" blog. Image: UK-based satellite spotter John Locker, photo by Jonathan Player for The New York Times.

[#1 posted by airship , February 5, 2008 11:45 AM]

When I had my Handspring Visor, I used Pocketsat for tracking satellites. It had data available for communications, military, and even top-secret satellites. I just thought it was so cool that I had a computer in my pocket that could show me what satellites were overhead in real-time.

http://www.bigfattail.com/software/pocketsatplus/index.html

[#2 posted by celerysword , February 5, 2008 1:43 PM]

Its good to see Cliff Clavin keeping himself busy after Cheers closed down.

[#3 posted by Micah , February 5, 2008 2:34 PM]

Wired did a similar article two years ago:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/spy.html

[#4 posted by Infinite Decay , February 5, 2008 6:01 PM]

If you want to do any satellite viewing on your own, there's a bunch of good websites that contain all the info that you need to do so. I like Heavens-Above, but there is also N2YO and NASA's own JTrack.