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In Astronomy SE Line of lights moving in a straight line, with a few following is the canonical close as duplicate target for questions about the likely seeing of recently deployed Starlinks that move in a straight line as they begin to disperse in phase along their orbital plane.

I'm sure there's a Python script to be written using Skyfield that could check Celestrak and find all Starlink TLEs and do this, but I wonder if there are now websites that users could be pointed to where you type in your lat/lon and it tells you when Starlink trains will be observable.

This would be really useful for edge cases where what the OP reports sounds like it might be a Starlink train but might not be. New users are often good about including date, time and location and so having an easy-to-use resource would be very handy to help answer and/or possibly close as duplicate the question.

Today's example in Astronomy SE just as an example:

In Astronomy meta:

related:

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    $\begingroup$ does this answer your question? findstarlink.com $\endgroup$
    – Topcode
    Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 23:33
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    $\begingroup$ @Topcode I don't know, does it? If it's contained in an answer post, then it's an answer. If that post is well received and others agree that it answers my question and it checks out per the OP as well, then it does. The answer should explain that it satisfies the criteria set forth in the question above. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 23:36
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    $\begingroup$ visualizations: satellitemap.space and celestrak.com/cesium/orbit-viz.php?tle=/NORAD/elements/… $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:12

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Heavens Above has both "Starlink passes for all objects from a launch" and "Starlink Dynamic 3D Orbit Display" pages that I've used to show Starlink trains to a distant, not-space-obsessed friend. The time controls on the Orbit Display page in particular might be helpful to demonstrate to a questioner that it was Starlink satellites they were seeing (and not another megaconstellation, or debris from one, in a few years).

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  • $\begingroup$ I need to remember to try this soon! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:12
  • $\begingroup$ @uhoh hope it works out for you. I've somehow broken WebGL in Firefox so I have to use it in Chrome, but it's been enough for me otherwise. If it does satisfy you, accept the answer, smash that like button, subscribe etc $\endgroup$
    – Erin Anne
    Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 19:34
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    $\begingroup$ If someone reported seeing a train-like group say two weeks ago at a given (date, time, lat, lon) how would I use Heavens Above to check it out? 1) go to the first page,linked 2) set the user's lat/lon location, 3) back-arrow one day at a time fourteen times 4) cycle through each of the individual launches, 5) for each, check if the page suddenly fills with a huge list of passes close in time to each other and to the reported time? For the 2nd link (3D map) we can only see the current configuration world-wide, or step it slowly into the future, we can't go back and re-create a given sighting? $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 23:02
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    $\begingroup$ oh that's a good point, they might only be using the most current ephemerides and it doesn't really make sense to back-propagate those. welp! upvoting your comment there; I'll think about it $\endgroup$
    – Erin Anne
    Commented Nov 4, 2020 at 3:03

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