It's still an almost nightly entertainment to go out at night -- usu   
   starting around 9pm -- and watch the interactions between various   
   lights flying around in the sky and a veritable bevy of small aircraft   
   and helicopters presumably operating out of Melbourne Airport around   
   50 km to my SW.   
      
   Almost every night a few lights come over, some seeming to behave like   
   satellites and some not, and sometimes within a few mins a small   
   aircraft or chopper just happens to turn up and disappear into the   
   distance totally by coincidence along the bearing the light was last   
   see minutes before.   
      
   It's become such a regular pattern I've been using the appearance of   
   the aircraft as an indication of what might appear to be a satellite   
   is probably not one.   
      
   OTOH some lights just don't behave like satellites at all. Mostly they   
   fly in tracks that a satellite should not be able to follow unless   
   they are on continuous power. And the so-called "light curve" of the   
   amount of light some of them give off seems not to match anything from   
   a satellite that generally are invisible most of the time, slowly   
   light up, get very bright, then reverse the lighting-up pattern to go   
   dark again.   
      
   Again last night there were a couple likely "real" sats and at least 1   
   almost certainly not sat.   
      
   Around 9pm a couple of probably-sats turned up. They came within 10   
   mins of each other from the N. Moving around jet speed -- around 1 deg   
   per sec.  Quite dim. They both went very near Orion that was high to   
   my N.  I have my suspicions when "satellites" keep going exactly   
   through Betelgeus (in my location Orion's left leg; some other folks   
   *insist* it's his left shoulder) or nearby Sirius. But sats *can* do   
   that so it has to be discounted as usual unless we have some   
   statistics on how often that's happening. And I haven't collated my   
   notes yet.   
      
   They both flew directly over me and tended to fade off to nothing   
   maybe 45 deg above the S horizon.   
      
   It's quite possible for sats to go N to S and S to N. A polar sat even   
   should approach slightly from the SE or NE because the earth rotates   
   at 1/4 deg per min toward the east.   
      
   But it is interesting some of these "polar sats" seem to turn up at   
   the same time of day and travel in loose groups.   
      
   But the 2nd "sat" of the evening was more interesting.   
      
   I was looking at something to the north and turned around S and this   
   sat was very bright -- brighter than Sirius that was still high in the   
   E -- relatively low in the sky -- no more than 30 deg above the horiz   
   -- and speeding very fast in my direction. A polar sat *might* be fast   
   but low down on the horizon they should all appear pretty slow.   
      
   The thing then started to dim slowly, down to nothing more than one of   
   the Belt Stars when it was directly over me. But it seemed to be   
   noticeably slowing down and almost hovering up there.   
      
   And sats should not be normally doing anything like that.   
      
   It then dawdled off toward the N, started to brighten and speed up,   
   reach cruising speed, dim down again, and disappear into the gloom   
   maybe around 30 deg above the N horizon.   
      
   Unfortunately for my "validating procedure" no light aircraft turned   
   up to chase the light. Maybe they were all sats after all.  Or maybe   
   the aircraft were on a break.   
      
   Over on one of the astro groups they are trying to get some programs   
   working to check what various known cataloged sats really look like   
   going over your location. I've tried the 2 programs various people   
   have suggested and wasn't terrifically impressed they got the visuals   
   correct. They calculate the idealised track well. But they generally   
   show a simplified version of how bright and big the sats might appear.   
      
   What you need is a program that can run various versions of what   
   happens over your back yard to see if what you saw incl the track and   
   light pattern could have happened at the time you saw it taking into   
   account the positions of sun, moon, and the earth-shine. Some   
   satellites can tumble while others are anchored with a gravity   
   boom. The program should get this right rather than assume the sat is   
   a dull metal sphere.   
      
   So I'm working on a program that can produce a simple movie of a sat   
   pass to check whether it matches what was seen.   
      
   I'll put it up on a web page somewhere when it gets to the Alpha stage.   
      
      
   --   
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)