Do Satellites Blink In The Sky

No satellites don t have blinking lights.

Do satellites blink in the sky.

Those end up looking more like bright stars if you see them at all. This flashing behavior is caused by the rotation of the satellite around its rotation axis. In the middle of the night you can t see them. People often ask us about flashes in the night sky and over the past 20 years many of those flashes turned out to be flares from communications satellites put into orbit by the iridium.

The satellite will look like a star steadily moving across the sky for a few minutes. Planes however do have blinking lights. Most come with blue and red these days high intensity green leds are a bit more expensive to manufacture but some still do have red gre. The satellite s metallic surfaces act as mirrors for the sun specular reflection.

What you will see is sunlight being reflected off the satellite often off the large solar arrays that provide power. If you see a moving blinking light in the sky at night it is most likely a plane. The only times satellites are visible to the naked eye are around dusk and dawn when it is fairly dark but sunlight reflects off of them. If the lights are blinking you probably are seeing a plane not a satellite.

Many satellites do not have a constant brightness they give off flashes at usually regular times. If you ve looked up at the night sky recently you might have been surprised to see a train of bright lights moving. Satellites do not have their own lights that make them visible. To do that the company will need to launch nearly 40 000 low orbit satellites in the next decade according to fox19 now meteorologist steve horstmeyer.