Why there are thousands above you
At any moment a few thousand catalogued objects are above the horizon of almost anywhere on Earth. Most are in low orbit, so each one crosses your sky in a few minutes and is replaced by another. The panel next to the globe lists them, highest first, and the globe highlights them while dimming everything that is below your horizon.
The count changes with latitude and with time. Most Starlink satellites fly in orbits tilted about 53° to the equator and spend much of each lap near that latitude, so observers in Europe, North America and much of Asia see the largest numbers. Geostationary satellites never move in your sky at all: they sit in a fixed arc across the southern sky from the northern hemisphere, and across the northern sky from the southern hemisphere.
Which of them can you actually see?
A satellite is only visible to the eye when sunlight is falling on it and your sky is dark - for a couple of hours after sunset and before sunrise. In the list, ☀ marks objects in sunlight. When the panel says your sky is dark, the sunlit objects high in the list are the ones worth looking for.
- The ISS is the brightest by far and easy to spot from a city. See the ISS tracker for its next visible passes.
- A line of lights moving together is almost always a Starlink batch a few days after launch, before the satellites spread out. Our article on why Starlink satellites fly in a line explains why.
- A light that brightens and fades in seconds is a flare: sunlight glinting off a flat panel or antenna.
- Most debris and small satellites are too faint to see without binoculars, even when sunlit.
Reading the list
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Elevation | How high above the horizon: 0° is on the horizon, 90° is straight overhead. Anything above about 30° is clear of trees and buildings for most people. |
| Direction | The compass point to face, from N through E, S and W. |
| ☀ / ● | Whether the object is in sunlight or inside Earth's shadow. |
Pick any row to put that object on the globe, draw its orbit and calculate its passes over you.
Your location stays with you
Working out what is above you needs your position, but it never leaves your device. Choose a city or let the browser locate you; the calculation runs inside this page and the choice is kept only in this browser's storage so it is there next time. Before you choose, the page may guess from your time zone, and says so.
Where the data comes from
Orbits come from the public General Perturbations (GP) catalogue published by Space-Track.org for the US Space Force, cross-checked against an independent set from CelesTrak before each release ships. A new release is built four times a day.
Each release is signed with Ed25519 - the same signed catalogue the Orbit Map apps download. Your browser checks that signature and the SHA-256 of every byte before drawing anything, then runs the SGP4/SDP4 model itself. Nothing about what you search for, or where you are, is sent back.
Public GP elements propagated for education. Accuracy degrades with element age. Not for conjunction assessment, navigation or antenna pointing. Earth imagery: NASA Blue Marble and Black Marble. City list: GeoNames, CC BY 4.0.