Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com where smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, is there any way to see satellites that are in orbit? If you are a neighbor has a satellite dish sitting in the yard to pick up television signals, then you know where at least one orbiting satellite is located. The
dish is pointed right at it. TV satellites unfortunately live in geosecretous orbits approximately twenty two thousand miles away, so it's impossible to see them unless you have a really big telescope. However, there are lots of satellites that pass overhead in a syncretous orbits, and there are only two
hundred or three hundred miles away. If you live in a place that has a very clear sky where for example, you can see the Milky Way at night, simply lie on your back on a moonless night and look carefully. Occasionally you'll see something that looks like a star, but it's moving. That's a satellite. This technique works especially well on a boat in the Caribbean close to the equator. The International Space Station is so large that it's extremely easy to see. You just need to know when to look.
There are many satellite tracking sites on the web that will tell you when and where to look. Jump into Google and you can find them. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com home page.