Satellites visible over Los Angeles

Artificial satellites orbiting the Earth are visible 1-2 hours after sunset and 1-2 hours before sunrise, while the ground is dark but the satellite is in sunlight because of its high altitude. This page lists predicted visibility times for some large and bright satellites of astronomical interest. These are easily visible even from the city of LA! The satellite will look like a moving star.

If you don't live in LA, the predictions on this page will not be useful for you, but the German Aerospace Center has a great satellite prediction page. Be sure to look at the Iridium flares! Here's a bright one over UCLA.

All times and dates Pacific Standard Time or Pacific Daylight Time.

Satellites with thrusters are sometimes way behind schedule, but these times are usually good to better than a minute.

Click on an entry to see a starchart with the satellite track. Planets and the Moon are in red, the satellite track is in blue.

GLAST

   time at maxel      az    az'  maxel Range Sunel @sat  @sat'  DM Age
 6/23/ 8  4:18:58   174.4  -0.4  23.8 1161.3 -14.9  2.8  0.052 -0.5  1
 6/24/ 8  4:12:39   177.1  -0.4  24.9 1126.0 -15.9  1.6  0.049 -0.7  2
 6/25/ 8  4: 6:38   172.6  -0.4  25.0 1122.0 -16.9  1.0  0.046 -0.6  3
 6/26/ 8  4: 0:54   162.3  -0.4  22.9 1186.0 -17.8  1.0  0.044 -0.4  4
 6/27/ 8  3:55:18   152.6  -0.3  18.7 1340.3 -18.6  1.0  0.042  0.0  5
 7/ 5/ 8 21:52: 8   200.1  -0.3  21.3 1234.5 -18.0  1.0 -0.044 -0.2 14