Here’s How to Track the Starlink Satellite Parade Across the El Paso Night Sky
A mysterious trail of lights in the El Paso nighttime sky caused not only a bit of a buzz on social media recently, it also reportedly resulted in a flood of inquiries to local TV station news desks.
As we previously reported, it wasn’t stars, weather balloons, an alien spacecraft, or a secret military weapons test of some sort. The reality is it was something much less dramatic. It was one of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites.
SpaceX, Musk's space-exploration company, has been launching these low-orbit satellites as part of an internet service the company is developing. The plan is to construct a satellite constellation that will provide high-speed internet to under-served locations all across the globe. Or at least that was my takeaway from the Wikipedia page I consulted.
Anyway, it’s going to take thousands of these things to accomplish the mission, so there’s a chance maybe you spot one of those extra-terrestrial looking string of lights on some future night.
But let's say you don't want to leave it up to chance. Well, there's a website for that. You can find out when the grouping of satellites will be moving over El Paso on any particular night and the best time to view them by using this uber-cool tracking site.
It provides the approximate time the train of bright, white lights is most likely to be visible, the flight path of the satellite constellation, whether cloud cover is going to be an issue and the number of satellites that particular satellite parade will consist of. Like I said, uber-cool.