
Show HN: See a Satellite Tonight. No Telescope Required - modeless
https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
======
emilioolivares
For whoever built this app: I was checking HN in bed. I clicked your app and
noticed the ISS would be passing overhead in less than a minute. My reaction
was to immediately jump up, yell at my kids to run with me outside. We didn't
know where to look, but then I figured out how to load the streetview and saw
that it would be closer to the horizon and BOOM. We finally saw it zooming
across the night sky, everybody started to cheer and yell. It was the most
amazing thing we've done all week :).

~~~
pks016
Same with me. ISS will cross me in few mins.(Edit: changed the exact minutes)

Edit:Saw it. I wanted to take a photo or video but the street light and
overexposed the photo. How do I take a reasonably good photo of ISS?

~~~
e12e
I don't know about the iss specifically, but was stunned that taking a
handheld photo with my huawei mate p20 pro - I could capture bright city
lights, the aurora _and_ a few bright stars shining through the aurora - in
the same frame.

I'd be hard pressed to manage the same with my (old) dslr.

~~~
ahakki
Pics or it didn't happen. That's an impressive amount of dynamic range you are
talking about.

~~~
e12e
Yes. It's a combination of high iso with relatively low noise, and some
enforced heavy handed post-processing in the camera app. And perhaps multiple
exposures, I suspect. The pictures aren't "great" \- but considering it's just
"point and shoot" \- I found it pretty impressive.

Let me see if I can't upload a couple of examples.

Ed: Any easy image hosting sites that work on mobile and allow selective
whitelisting of exif data? I might want to strip time/GPS, but keep/present
exposure information.. All without having to go via a desktop image program.

~~~
scarejunba
[https://imgur.com/upload](https://imgur.com/upload) is the fastest to make it
accessible but it doesn't allow selective whitelisting.

~~~
e12e
Ah oh well. The motives and information already on hn probably correlate well
enough anyway, so:

[https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=10SO7r98DwjkMRj7H2uhK...](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=10SO7r98DwjkMRj7H2uhKBB1rw1oXGmjt)

I guess you'll have to download to see exif info.

Ed: i guess a photo sharing site that both values exif (exposure etc) and
privacy (allow whitelisting) might be a nice side project..

~~~
scarejunba
These photos are amazing!

I think Flickr gives you what you want. But you do have to pay.

------
kgwxd
HA! I've never seen the ISS before. Went out to the front of the house to
watch with my kid. Lo and behold, a light appears right where the site said it
would, following the trajectory. I start recording. Watching it, I start to
notice blinking colored lights and comment that I didn't think we'd be able to
see blinking lights. They start getting clearer (you already know where this
is going), I start to get suspicious and stop recording. It's moving pretty
fast so we follow it to the backyard at which point we're both pretty sure we
can hear it. I'm already positive what we just watched was a plane but, just
as it fades away, I look just a little higher up and see a much smaller white,
non-blikning dot moving almost just as fast. So we watched that. Instead of
losing it over the horizon of our fence, it sort of fades out of view in the
middle of the sky, which I've never witnessed, and was damn cool to see, but
exactly what I would expect to see watching a space station and not a plane :)

Went back and watched the short video I did shoot and, even at low quality,
the ISS was visible right above the plane the entire time, we just didn't
notice. What are the chances a close, but not so close to be immediately
obvious (which happens a lot here), plane would be flying almost the same
trajectory as the ISS the first time I try to view it?

------
trothamel
At first I was going to wonder what the benefit of this above something like
www.heavens-above.com is, and then I went all the way through. The real
benefit is, I think, the use of a street view visualization to show where the
satellites are going to be in the sky.

I would suggest that it might make sense to emphasize that technology over the
globe-with-satellite view, as it's a much better trick to pull off.

~~~
modeless
Thanks! The problem is street view is expensive. I would love to load it at
startup but I would run out my free Maps API quota more quickly. (That may
happen anyway if this gets popular.) I'm hoping that this way people who
aren't that interested bounce before loading street view so that the quota is
reserved for people who are really interested.

~~~
jugg1es
Google should just buy this from you and make it part of google maps for free
:)

~~~
alexis_fr
No, because Google would then risk shut it down.

What he should do is, ask for free « open-source » credits, for the glory of
science. That’s something Google would get behind.

------
crazygringo
What an incredibly creative idea.

On the home page I thought, yeah sure but how am I gonna know _exactly_ where
to look _exactly_ when and _how long_ do I have...

...and then the first result was the ISS moving in real-time laid over my
street view, and all my questions were perfectly answered. I mean, I know what
_building_ to look above down to the second!

So just -- super-kudos, one of the cleverest things I've seen in a while.

------
infinitone
Great execution, a breath of fresh air that you don't ask to 'sign up', 'enter
email', etc. and just provide the value right away to be experienced.

~~~
maimeowmeow
Site doesnt work unless you give it location access.

~~~
modeless
It should fall back to IP geolocation, but you really need to know at least a
general location to get accurate times.

~~~
rolltiide
what is the default using when I'm using my desktop? My Wifi SSID and creepy
pre-sharing to databases that I did inadvertently?

~~~
modeless
The default is the HTML geolocation API, as implemented by your web browser.

------
anonytrary
The street-view feature is very impressive, and very useful, especially when
combined with the schedule. Thank you for building this.

~~~
MiroF
Yes! Looks like the ISS is passing over me in 30 minutes and I know exactly
where to look now.

------
amatecha
Another excellent site for live-tracking of satellites is
[https://www.n2yo.com](https://www.n2yo.com) which seems to have a pretty
exhaustive database of satellites of all kinds. I've used it to track the ISS'
position when they were transmitting SSTV images[0] and I was able to pick up
those images with my handheld VHF radio[1]!

The site gives 10-day estimates of the satellites' passes (for example the ISS
at [2]), but I found its estimation of visibility to be a bit inaccurate for
radio reception. Maybe that was more due to my radio antenna positioning
though - not sure! Still, it's super useful to give you an idea of possible
schedule for upcoming passes, in case you want to plan for it!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-
scan_television](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/amatecha/status/1157891660648370176](https://twitter.com/amatecha/status/1157891660648370176)

[2]
[https://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=25544](https://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=25544)

~~~
tomfanning
These sites are all highly likely to be using something known as TLEs (two
line element files) or "keps", which come from NORAD, based on radar
observations, for their positional data.

[https://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/tle-
fmt.php](https://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/tle-fmt.php)

[https://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/](https://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/)

Anything using these TLEs should be identical.

For radio reception, if the problem wasn't pointing calibration, I suspect it
was polarisation. There is ~3dB difference between 0 and 45 degrees, but ~25dB
difference between 0 and 90 degrees. Therefore either use circularly polarised
antennas (e.g. [https://www.wimo.com/xquad-
antennas_e.html](https://www.wimo.com/xquad-antennas_e.html)) so you're never
more than 45 degrees out, or if it's hand-held, simply twist the antenna for
maximum signal strength. The polarisation will vary through the pass.

For some really crappy satellite positioning / radio software that everyone
uses because no-one's written a better one yet, check out satpc32.

------
spookyuser
Others have already said that the street view integration is amazing but I
just want to say that I think it's actually better than most of the live
sattelite augmented reality apps I've used, which just never seem to work for
me and even after looking at them for ten minutes I still can't tell what's
going on. It's really awesome

------
dinarphatak
This is very cool application of technology. I have always wanted to see the
ISS but did not know where to look in the sky. The Google Street View
integration tells me exactly where to look.

~~~
conradfr
[https://issdetector.com](https://issdetector.com) (ISS is free, not sure
about the other objects) does that and you can set up an alarm.

You can point your phone at the sky and see the exact path, visibility
conditions etc but wow that Google Street integration by OP makes ISS Detector
feel almost outdated.

Especially important in a city where a lot of times buildings will make the
sighting impossible.

------
mabbo
I just saw the ISS!

This was posted a few hours ago and told me exactly where and when to look and
sure enough, there it was.

Thanks!

~~~
tonyarkles
Yeah, I lucked out, it was only 10 minutes away when I opened the site. Really
cool! Thanks OP!

------
rdamico
I just happened to stumble upon this an hour ago and was able to catch the ISS
passing over Boston shortly later! The street view integration is magic and
made the ISS a piece of cake to find.

This is such a clever app, and the street view integration is very slick! I
did notice that the button to notify me when other objects will be passing
overhead didn't do anything (iOS safari)... would love to sign up for
notifications when there are more sightings to be had.

~~~
modeless
Glad you were able to see the ISS! Thanks for the bug report. I just found out
that the reason for this is that Safari does not support the standard Web Push
API. [https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=push-
api](https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=push-api)

Maybe they'll implement it eventually. Until then I guess I'll hide the
notification button in Safari.

------
tectonic
This is excellent! Perfect execution. Street View even has a night filter
applied.

We'll include it in The Orbital Index
([https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com)) next week.

------
sb057
I'm guessing its not a coincidence you chose the day the ISS passes over the
middle of the continental US to post this?

~~~
BWStearns
It is visible for a couple weeks every couple months. Could just be
coincidence (though kudos for good marketing if it's planned!). I am wondering
though if there's a prioritization for visibility going on, like `maximumBy
(comparing brightness) (filter isInLOS allSatellites)` or if there's some
prioritization by known-ness. I suspect ISS would score high in both.

------
codingdave
I love the Street view integration, as people have already said.

However, I plugged in an address that I know will be accurate when put into
Google Maps, but it put me at the generic center of my zip code. That is still
close enough to figure things out, but I'm curious why an address would work
on Maps, but not this site?

~~~
modeless
I'm using a free geocoding service instead of Google Maps, to preserve my free
quota for Street View. If you load it on your phone you'll get GPS location
instead of geocoding which should work better.

~~~
oceliker
Can confirm -- I checked it out on my phone and the street view location is 10
meters away from where I currently stand (Davis Sq, Somerville, MA)

------
softblush
Doesn't work for me. All I see in Firefox (on desktop) is a blurry earth
animation which you can zoom but which does nothing. There are some errors in
the console and that's about it. There might be some text or something in the
lower left corner but that is blurry too.

~~~
modeless
There should be a Firefox location permission prompt, which you can allow or
decline to continue. If not, perhaps an extension is blocking the geolocation
API?

~~~
softblush
Geolocation requests are blocked via Firefox privacy settings. There is no
hint on the page that it is required.

~~~
modeless
It's not required. Perhaps Firefox's implementation of privacy blocking breaks
the behavior of the API, which has a standard way of denying location
information. Or maybe you're also blocking the IP geolocation service that I
use as a fallback.

~~~
modeless
Just following up, I tested in Firefox with strict privacy settings and
location disabled, and it works for me with the IP geolocation fallback. If IP
geolocation fails I have a further fallback to enter your street address. So
something else must be broken.

------
whoisjuan
Can you see satellites if you live in a city?

~~~
spilk
The Moon and ISS are pretty easy to see almost everywhere.

~~~
kgwxd
Hmm, now I want a notification when the ISS will pass in front of the Moon
from my location.

Edit: Of course [http://i2.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/t...](http://i2.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/thumb.jpeg?resize=950%2C582)

------
dmd
I got lucky and clicked on this and less than a minute later there was an ISS
transit, and I ran outside and saw it!

------
jdright
Same here, saw the post, tested it and saw ISS was passing over my house in a
few minutes, called my wife to go outside look for it. At first we saw a
(possible) satellite, we thought it was too little to be ISS and the
trajectory wasn't correct as displayed on the site. Then it just disappeared
and when we're heading back inside, we saw the actual ISS, brighter, 2 to 3
times bigger, disappearing near the same spot as the satellite. It was about 2
minutes late and about 10 (land) meters to the right if compared with the
projection in google street view, but still impressed by the precision.

Great job with this. Wife enjoyed and it piqued her interest on ISS! Thanks.

------
tzs
That was cool.

A kind of similar thing I'd like to see is something for geosynchronous
satellites that tells you now, and at future times of your choosing, where
they are relative to the visible constellations at your location.

That could make finding a good spot for a satellite dish a lot easier. Pick a
time at night, find out what constellation the satellite will be in then, and
later all you have to do is go out at that time and find a spot where you can
see the right part of that constellation.

------
dwighttk
This is cool if you don't have time, but if you just look at the sky at night
for a while in a dark enough area, you'll see a satellite.

------
Avamander
I love Sky Map Android app, would love seeing satellites and planes like this
there. Are there any available out there? Sky Map AR basically.

------
matt2000
This is so cool! Using streetview really matters for some reason, it made it
totally obvious where the thing was going to appear. Great job.

------
mirimir
It sounds great, but needs WebGL. So not for me.

I wonder if it _really_ needed WegGL. Sigh.

Edit: With WebGL enabled, sites can fingerprint _VMs_. So multiple Debian-
family VMs on the same host will have the same fingerprint. VMs with different
virtual graphics stacks do have different fingerprints, however. Or Debian-
family VMs on different host machines. That's why no WebGL for me.

------
ramk
Kudos! Very nicely done. It would be nice to have an easy way to see more
details about the satellite. For example, I see that tonight I can see CZ-2C
R/B, though without a search I do not quite know anything more about the
satellite.

Also like the night mode in the street view. Does that come with the Google
Maps API or something you had to build?

~~~
modeless
Good suggestion, I'd like to add some info about the satellites. I made the
"night mode" for Street View with an SVG filter applied to the street view
canvas with CSS.

------
slater
"This browser doesn't support the API's required to use the firebase SDK.
(messaging/unsupported-browser)."

:(

Firefox, macOS

~~~
modeless
Hmm, old version maybe? I can't reproduce this on Firefox 68 or 69 on macOS.

~~~
slater
Firefox 69, macOS 10.14.6 ️

~~~
modeless
Strange. Perhaps an installed extension? Anyway, I catch this error now so it
shouldn't interrupt your use of the site (except that notifications won't
work).

------
mLuby
Perfect use for tech—bravo!

Can you do this with airplanes too? Might be fun to "see" where they're
from/going.

------
_nalply
Tonight I saw what I thought are three different satellites. Then I went to
your website, however I was not able to look back in the past. I modified
system time back two hours to learn about what I saw. So there: a feature
proposal: a possibility to look back to learn what one has watched.

------
spectramax
This is such a great example of building products that serve the need of the
customer - nails it with zero ambiguity. Please blog about how you did it,
software stack, your thought process and be it a reminder that deep thoughtful
approach towards a problem can deliver exceptional results.

------
mmaunder
That street view simulation is.... epic. Some of the sweetest dev I've seen
this year.

------
sm4rk0
This is great! Just wanted to ask did you miss out Iridium flares due to API
quota but then found out on HA that the next one is in 10 days for my location
(northern Serbia). They were much more frequent last time I checked (10 years
ago)

~~~
JshWright
The new generation of Iridium satellites don't flare. All of the next-gen
satellites were launched over the past couple years, and the older generation
is being phased out (and deorbited) as the new ones come online.

------
jesalg
This is ingenious! Love the use of Google Street View.

Reminds me of a small project I put together which offered a reverse
perspective of the ISS: [http://www.loworbit.co/](http://www.loworbit.co/)

------
Rarok
Are the hours in my local TimeZone, in GMT or in the timezone of the
developer?

~~~
modeless
Local time as determined by your browser settings.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
I'd recommend showing this + the time zone (e.g. "browser local time, UTC+2").
My guess was that it's the local time of the location entered, which can
matter when telling someone "hey, you'll be able to see a cool satellite
looking out your northward window at 9 pm!". If you're worried about keeping a
clean look, at least add a tooltip.

(I've also been trained to distrust any time that doesn't specify a time zone,
because I've seen sites that default to some random US timezone, use your
local time, use UTC, ...)

~~~
fyfy18
> I've also been trained to distrust any time that doesn't specify a time zone

My pet peeve is status pages that only show times in some US timezone. I'm
supposed to know what the conversion from that timezone to my timezone is, and
then the timezone to my servers (which are in UTC)...

------
gameshot911
Wow...I basically never let webpages use my location, but I did for this one,
and it landed about 200 feet from my apartment. That's crazy accurate! How can
an IP be linked to a geolocation that closely?

~~~
dev_dull
Are you using Chrome? It’s probably not geo IP.

~~~
foota
Yeah, geo ip doesn't need permission to work (modulo privacy), that will all
be done server side.

~~~
gameshot911
Okay, so then how does a website know my location to 200 feet?

~~~
zaroth
If you grant location access there is a fast/low accuracy response, and the
site can request a slow/high accuracy response which would be your exact GPS
location, potentially down to the meter.

[https://www.andygup.net/how-accurate-is-html5-geolocation-
re...](https://www.andygup.net/how-accurate-is-html5-geolocation-really-
part-2-mobile-web/)

~~~
gameshot911
I'm on a desktop though - no GPS/wifi.

~~~
why-oh-why
If you're using Chrome, Google knows your location through your phone (and
Google Maps, if you're on an iPhone)

If you're on mac and have an iPhone, same thing is happening across the whole
OS.

Available WiFis, even if you're not connected to one, will be used by your OS
to provide location as well.

This uses the basic Geolocation API, you can look up how your computer figures
out its location for more detailed info.

------
janpot
Awesome, my dad is gonna love this. I've been using the "ISS detector" app. it
has a compass that when you line it up with your phone, it points to the
object you're trying to track.

------
LMYahooTFY
Is there a site which lists all known satellites in orbit and their
trajectories?

Upon sitting on a roof some weeks ago in Texas, I thought I spotted at least 5
or 6+ within 30 minutes. Is this probable?

~~~
fyfy18
Heavens Above will give you a list of all satellites passing overhead. If you
go to "Daily predictions of brighter satellites" it will give a big list of
satellites that should be visible from your location. The lower the magnitude,
the brighter it will be.

In a city you obviously aren't going to see much because of light pollution
(although the ISS is one of the brightest objects, so it should be visible in
most cities). If you go to the middle of nowhere, and give your eyes time to
adjust to the darkness (around 30 mins), you will see satellites basically all
the time and may even see the milky way (it looks like the pictures, but black
and white as our eyes can't pick up enough light to detect the colour).

[https://heavens-above.com/](https://heavens-above.com/)

------
Urgo
This is really cool! Love the street view visualization! I have a request
though. To save time searching for the satellite is there anyway you could
provide info to what it is as well?

------
kebman
I used to wonder what those small pricks of light were, that would travel
accross the night sky. Then someone told me they were satellites, and my whole
UFO dream was busted. :)

------
mholt
This is amazing. LOVE how you did the Street View integration!

------
samstave
:-(

Entering my address and hitting GO does nothing...

But I love the idea. However it showed me the times and the satellite but I
can’t click on the satellite and see what it does :-(

(I’m in Santa Rosa on an iPad)

~~~
modeless
Sorry to hear that. What generation iPad and version of iOS? I've only tested
on the latest.

------
TrickyRick
Awesome service! However notifications don't seem to work in Safari. It says
"Notifications not allowed" in spite of me having set it to allowed.

~~~
modeless
Hmm, I'm using FCM for notifications, maybe it behaves differently in Safari.
I'll take a look later. Thanks for the report.

~~~
modeless
Turns out Safari doesn't support the standard way of doing push notifications.
[https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=push-api](https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=push-
api)

Until they do, I'll hide the notifications button in Safari.

~~~
TrickyRick
Thanks for looking into it!

------
anovikov
I click on "See where it will appear in the sky", the view just clears an
nothing happens. I see black stuff. Nothing on it. In any browser.

------
kotrunga
Thank you for sharing this. My wife and I got to see the ISS fly across the
sky, and we knew exactly where and when to look. I really appreciate it!

------
shmerl
You can use Stellarium for that as well:
[https://stellarium.org](https://stellarium.org)

------
jtchang
Wow this is fantastic. Just saw it streaming across the sky evening in oakland
it is possible to see it with all the light pollution!

------
suyash
This is such a cool app, whoever built it, how did you map the trajectory on
Google Street View with animation?

~~~
modeless
Thanks! I'm using the same library that displays the 3D globe view, CesiumJS.
I feed it the camera parameters from the Street View API and from that it can
calculate the coordinates of the satellite on screen. I take those coordinates
and use the 2D canvas API to draw the satellite dot and label. The 2D canvas
is overlaid on top of Street View with some basic CSS.

~~~
suyash
very nice

------
uptown
Watched the ISS pass overhead with my family in our backyard last night. Thank
you for creating this!

------
llacb47
Awesome! I will try to use this soon.

------
eismcc
Wow! Great work!

The next thing that would be useful is an AR integration. I’d prefer that over
google street view.

------
jugg1es
Wow, this is really great! The street view feature is a revelation man.
Excellent project!

~~~
jugg1es
You need to add og:image to this site so facebook sharing is more effective.

~~~
modeless
Thanks! og:image is there, is it not working for you? It's nothing fancy, just
a screenshot of the site.

~~~
jugg1es
huh - it didn't popup for me when I pasted the link to facebook.

------
pergadad
Amazing app. Really sad it doesn't work in Firefox (mobile) though :-(

~~~
modeless
Sorry to hear that it doesn't work for you. It does work for me but it is very
slow unfortunately.

------
runxel
Really great! Too bad there isn't Street View available everywhere :(

------
resters
This was a reminder to try to contact the ISS using amateur radio.

------
omrjml
This is great. Even displays the cloud cover forecast. Love it.

------
matt_the_bass
I just saw the ISS with my kids (3 and 6). They were so excited.

Thank you!

------
israrkhan
That integration with street-view is awesome!!

------
gohwell
I saw the ISS last night. This app is great!

------
ybahubali2018
This is great. I am gonna try it today

------
foolfoolz
there’s a great app called iss spotter that will tell you how to see the space
station

------
aspectmin
Kudos. An amazing app! Nice job.

------
cryptozeus
Is the time in local timezone ?

------
floki999
Nice.. really well done!

------
perchard
Also check out Sky Guide[0].

It's an iOS app that (among many other awesome things) tracks 250+ satellites
- and can send a notification before they pass over your location[1].

[0] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sky-
guide/id576588894](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sky-guide/id576588894)

[1]
[https://www.fifthstarlabs.com/support#satellites](https://www.fifthstarlabs.com/support#satellites)

------
BlueGh0st
Cool concept but the implementation is terrible. Just give me a button to
input my own location. Not to mention the dot on the globe is about 3,000
miles from the street view it gives me.

~~~
modeless
That is likely to happen if you decline location permission and the IP
geolocation fallback is inaccurate. If you try on your phone it should get an
accurate GPS location. Adding a way to manually override the location by
specifying latitude and longitude is on my to-do list.

