Satellites
Starlink train tonight: where to look, and a live 3D map
A Starlink train is a line of satellites, launched together, that can be seen as a string of bright dots moving across the sky in the first days after a launch, before they spread out and climb to their working height.
Our saved element sets hold 11,152 Starlink objects (CelesTrak's supplemental file, saved 15 October 2026). That is every Starlink satellite they list, in orbit or on its way up, not the number you can see tonight: from one place on a clear night it is the few dozen in a fresh train, or none.
The map flies to a Starlink satellite and turns its layer on.
Your sky tonight: the trip that starts from your own street and names what is worth looking for.
How a train forms
A Falcon 9 rocket releases dozens of Starlink satellites at once, in a low orbit, all within a few minutes and a few kilometres of each other. For days afterwards they keep nearly the same orbit, so they pass over you one after another, like beads on a string. Each then fires its own thruster to climb to about 550 km, and the orbits drift apart: the line stretches, fades and is gone in a few weeks. The map's "fresh Starlink trains" layer shows the satellites of launches under ten days old, grouped by launch.
When a train can be seen
Only in the hours after dusk or before dawn, when the sky is dark where you are and the satellites, hundreds of kilometres up, are still lit by the Sun. Which night depends on the launch and on where you are, so this page does not print a schedule that would be wrong by tomorrow; the map computes where each satellite is for the instant on its clock and for your place.
Measured or computed? The orbital elements are SpaceX's own, republished by CelesTrak, and are measurements. The positions are computed from them (SGP4) and get worse the older the elements are; the map says how old they are on every card. The number above is a count of objects listed, read on the date given.