Do Satellites Blink In The Sky

If you see a moving blinking light in the sky at night it is most likely a plane.

Do satellites blink in the sky.

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. Starlink satellites seen after the first launch in may 2019. Those end up looking more like bright stars if you see them at all. 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.

Satellites do not have their own lights that make them visible. The satellite will look like a star steadily moving across the sky for a few minutes. Many satellites do not have a constant brightness they give off flashes at usually regular times. Planes however do have blinking lights.

This flashing behavior is caused by the rotation of the satellite around its rotation axis. Currently there are just over 400. In the middle of the night you can t see them. No satellites don t have blinking lights.

If you ve looked up at the night sky recently you might have been surprised to see a train of bright lights moving. 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. Satellite flare also known as satellite glint is a satellite pass visible to the naked eye as a brief bright flare it is caused by the reflection toward the earth below of sunlight incident on satellite surfaces such as solar panels and antennas e g synthetic aperture radar. What you will see is sunlight being reflected off the satellite often off the large solar arrays that provide power.