are satellites visible from earth by the naked eye?

Answer 1

Yes - If you take the time you will see many satellites whizzing overhead. Consult a website for times and positions, e.g:

Answer 2

Definitely yes. In my profession as a tour guide I am regularly pointing them out to people. They are only visible to us while illuminated or reflecting the light of the Sun which means up to a couple of hours after sunset or a couple of hours before sunrise. Mostly they merely look like a star moving slowly across the sky, sometimes quite feint. You know it's not a plane because planes have flashing navigation lights and the satellite will at some point suddenly fade out of sight as it passes into the Earth's shadow. Most of the visible ones are actually old rocket boosters used to put other satellites into orbit but the larger satellites like the International Space Station (ISS) or Hubble Space Telescope (HST) can be very bright. Occasionally you may be lucky enough to see an iridium flash where the satellites solar panels reflect the light of the Sun straight at you. Spectacular!

There's an awesome website where you simply tell it what city/town you are in and it can tell you exactly what time which satellite will be visible to you. It's called: www.Heavens-Above.com

Answer 3

Yes, some are easily seen by naked eye. The space station is very bright, brighter than the brightest star, and so is the shuttle, when it is in orbit. And numerous other, smaller, low Earth orbit satellites, such as the Iridium satellites, are visible. Lots of spy satellites are visible too. Spy satellites frequently are in polar orbits, so they move in a north-south direction, as opposed to most other satellites that move more east-west. Satellites look very much light high flying aircraft, but without the blinking colored lights. You can usually see several each evening if you are looking for them. There are also web sites that will predict when a given satellite will be visible at your location. The source below is one of them.

Answer 4

Bear in mind that the moon is a satellite - so if you wanted to catch someone out you could drop that one into the conversation!

The largest man-made object circling the earth is the international space centre, you CAN SEE it and other man-made satellites with the naked eye on a clear night.

This link will help you.

Answer 5

most communication satellites are in Geo-synchronous orbit, about 35000 miles from the earths surface so there are not visible by naked eye, however i heard you can see the international space station with a small telescope or with a naked eye if the moon is not out and the night is clear ( it is about 170-200 miles above the surface)

Answer 6

No because of atmosphere the satellites cannot be seen by the naked eye.

Answer 7

almost always. They usually appear as planes without the redish lights on them, since they are always on the move!

Unless, that is, your talking about sattlites like our moon, which, the3 moon is visible to the naked eye only. However, Europa, Io, Gandymede, and Callisto or whatever the gallileo moons are I recall are dso brighyt, you can find them mearly with bonoculars

Answer 8

Satellites Visible From Earth

Answer 9

Some are. I used to spend a lot of time on Big Whale Cay in the Bahamas and we would lay out on the beach at night and watch 5 different ones throughout the night. We used to mess with some of the workers and tell them that they were UFO's. You should have seen the looks on some of their faces. LOL!

Sitting in the Bahamas: $400
Fat Sack: $200
Finding out your friend is scared s#!tless of little green men: Priceless!

Answer 10

Some of them are, yes. You can see them as a star that is moving slowly and evenly across the sky. You need to be away from light pollution, however, and it helps if there is no moon out.