Mar 31, 2021 20:00:00

I tried using the web application 'See A Satellite Tonight' that displays the position of the artificial satellite shining in the night sky on top of Street View

There are countless artificial satellites floating around the earth, and some of them fly within a visible distance from the ground. The web application 'See A Satellite Tonight ' tells you exactly where such an artificial satellite is flying when you look up from the ground. Since the position of the visible artificial satellite is displayed superimposed on Google Street View, what time and direction can the artificial satellite and the International Space Station of the satellite Internet service 'Starlink' actually deployed by SpaceX be observed? I looked it up.

See A Satellite Tonight
https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/

The top page of 'See A Satellite Tonight' looks like this. You can click anywhere on the screen to launch 'See A Satellite Tonight'.

When you click on the screen, you will be asked for permission to access your location to view information about your current night sky. You can specify your current location yourself, so click 'Do not allow' this time.

After waiting for a while, 'See A Satellite Tonight' will start. Originally, Google Street View is displayed on the right side of the screen, but this time it is not displayed because access to location information is not permitted. Click Open Street View to specify where you want it to appear in Google Street View.

Next, enter the points you want to display and click 'OK'. This time, I want to find out information about artificial satellites flying over Tokyo Tower, so I entered 'Shibakoen 4, Minato-ku, Tokyo'.

The screen that displays the position of the artificial satellite that can be seen from the vicinity of Tokyo Tower in 'See A Satellite Tonight' looks like this. From the left of the screen, 'date and time when the artificial satellite can be observed', 'positional relationship between the specified point and the artificial satellite as seen from space', and 'image of overlapping the positions of the artificial satellite and stars that can be seen with Google Street View' are displayed. It has been.

By clicking the date / time displayed on the left side of the screen, you can check the artificial satellite information that can be observed at that date / time. This time, I will observe the night sky around Tokyo Tower at 6:54 pm on April 1, 2021.

The positional relationship between the Tokyo Tower area and the artificial satellite as seen from space at 6:54 pm on April 1, 2021 looks like this. You can see that Starlink's artificial satellites fly in a row in the northwestern sky. In addition, the weather forecast at that time is also displayed at the bottom of the screen, saying 'Clouds may cover the sky (at 6:54 pm, there is a 22% chance of clouding)'.

At the right edge of the screen, an image of the position of the artificial satellite is displayed on Google Street View. Looking up at Tokyo Tower from Shiba Park, you can see that Starlink's satellites can also be observed. Also, if you click 'Schedule a reminder to go outside and look' displayed at the top of the screen ...

Like this, you can set the notification of the astronomical observation schedule by either 'browser notification', 'Google calendar', or 'iCal format calendar file'.

You can also switch the observation point by clicking 'Change location' at the bottom center of the screen.

As a test, when I looked up the information on the artificial satellites that can be observed in London, I found that I could observe two rows of Starlink artificial satellites at the same time at 5:20 am on 2021/04/01.