Live Starlink Satellite Tracker

This live Starlink satellite tracker shows where every Starlink satellite is right now, more than 11,000 of them, using public orbital data refreshed every few hours. Tap any dot to see its altitude, speed and path, search by name or NORAD number, or set your location to find out when the next Starlink “satellite train” passes over you.

  • What it shows: every Starlink satellite in CelesTrak’s public catalog (11,106 on September 24, 2026)
  • Satellite trains: satellites launched in the last 30 days are highlighted in pink, with predicted visible passes for your location
  • Data: CelesTrak orbital data, refreshed every few hours; positions recalculated every second in your browser
  • Accuracy: good enough to know where to look; expect errors of a few kilometers
  • Cost and privacy: free, no sign-up, and your location never leaves your device
Live
…satellites tracked
…launched in the last 30 days
—set your location
…orbit data age

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Can I see a Starlink train tonight?

Set your location and the tracker predicts when the newest Starlink launches pass over you in the next 5 days, at times when you can actually see them: satellites in sunlight, your sky dark, and at least 10° above the horizon. Your location stays in your browser and is never sent to us.

Orbital data: CelesTrak (refreshed every few hours). Positions are calculated in your browser with the SGP4 model and can be off by a few kilometers. Not affiliated with SpaceX or Starlink.

How to Use the Starlink Tracker

  • Tap or click a dot to see that satellite’s name, altitude, speed and orbit. Its path over the ground appears as a line: solid for the next orbit, dashed for the last half orbit.
  • Search by name (for example STARLINK-1008) or by NORAD catalog number.
  • Newest train jumps to the most recent Starlink launch.
  • The time slider moves the whole constellation up to 6 hours back or 24 hours ahead. Slide back to check whether the lights you saw earlier were a Starlink train.
  • Night side shading shows where it is dark on Earth right now. Satellites are only visible from the ground near the edge of that shading, during twilight.
  • Set your location to count the satellites above your horizon and get a list of upcoming visible train passes.

Each Falcon 9 launch releases a stack of Starlink satellites into a low orbit. In the data behind this tracker, the four Starlink launches in the 30 days before September 24, 2026 carried 27 to 29 satellites each. For the first days they fly close together, so from the ground they look like a line of evenly spaced lights gliding across the sky: the Starlink “train”.

They are bright at first because they are low and reflecting sunlight. Researchers who measured Starlink satellites during orbit raising found that those below 357 km averaged magnitude 2.7, as bright as many familiar stars, while those above 357 km averaged 6.5, around the faint limit of the naked eye (Mallama et al., 2024). 357 km is where SpaceX starts applying its brightness-reduction measures during the climb.

As the satellites climb to their working orbit and spread out along it, the train stretches into a scattered line and fades. SpaceX has also cut brightness with sunshades, a mirror film that reflects sunlight away from Earth, and by changing how the satellites and their solar arrays are angled (SpaceX, Brightness Mitigation Best Practices).

Starlink trains are regularly reported as UFOs. A 2024 study traced one such report, by five airline pilots over the Pacific on August 10, 2022, to a recently launched Starlink train (Buettner et al., 2024).

  1. Set your location in the tracker above and check the pass list. Passes marked “Bright” are your best chance.
  2. Go out a few minutes early. Visible passes happen in the first hours after sunset or before sunrise, when your sky is dark but the satellites high above you are still in sunlight.
  3. Face the direction shown (for example “Look NW → SE”) and watch that part of the sky. The train appears there and moves across.
  4. Use your eyes. A train crosses the sky in a few minutes, too fast for a telescope. Binoculars help with fainter passes.
  5. Get away from bright lights if you can. From a city, only the brightest passes stand out.

How long a train stays visible depends on the launch. In the data behind this tracker on September 24, 2026, satellites launched on September 2 were still about 325 km up, below the 357 km brightness threshold, three weeks after launch. If the pass list is empty, there is no bright launch passing over you in darkness this week; check back after the next launch.

Not as a train. Satellites in the main constellation are spread out and much fainter; the same study measured those above 357 km at around magnitude 6.5, near the limit of what the naked eye can see from a dark site (Mallama et al., 2024). On a clear night away from city lights you may catch one as a faint “moving star” in the first hours after dusk, but a line of bright lights almost always means a recent launch.

The tracker counts every Starlink object in CelesTrak’s public catalog. On September 24, 2026 that was 11,106. Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who keeps an independent Starlink catalog, listed 12,962 launched and 11,154 in orbit as of September 21, 2026 (Jonathan’s Space Report). The small gap comes from timing and from how brand-new or failed satellites are counted.

From the same data, about 83% of Starlink satellites (9,181 of 11,106) were orbiting between 450 and 500 km up, and roughly 690 were between 350 and 375 km. Only a few dozen were below 300 km, where satellites are usually on their way to re-entering the atmosphere. At around 480 km a Starlink satellite travels at about 7.6 km/s (over 27,000 km/h) and circles the Earth roughly every 94 minutes. Tap any satellite on the map to see its own figures.

| Related: See the ground stations that connect these satellites to the internet on our Starlink ground station map

How the Tracker Works

Data: the tracker uses public orbital data (GP element sets) published by CelesTrak. Our server downloads the Starlink set every few hours, together with CelesTrak’s list of objects launched in the last 30 days, and your browser loads that copy. CelesTrak allows each download only once every two hours, which is why the tracker doesn’t fetch it separately for every visitor.

Positions: your browser runs the standard SGP4 orbit model (using the open-source satellite.js library) to work out where each satellite is, once a second. SGP4 positions are approximate. Errors of a few kilometers are normal and grow as the data ages, satellites that maneuver drift from their predicted path until the next update, and brand-new satellites can take a day or two to appear. That is fine for knowing where to look, not for pointing a telescope.

Pass predictions: for each launch from the last 30 days, the tracker follows the middle satellite of the group for the next 5 days. It counts a pass as visible when the satellite is at least 10° above your horizon, the Sun is at least 6° below your horizon (after civil twilight), and the satellite itself is in sunlight. The brightness label is a rough guide based on altitude. We spot-checked the predictions against the Skyfield astronomy library, and pass times and heights matched to within a minute and a degree.

Privacy: if you use “Use my location”, your browser shares an approximate position with the page only. It is rounded to about 1 km, saved in your own browser so the page remembers it, and never sent to Dishy Central. “Forget my location” removes it. Map tiles are loaded from OpenStreetMap.

| Related: How big are Starlink satellites? Sizes by generation

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Positions are recalculated every second from orbital data that is refreshed every few hours. The “orbit data age” figure above the map shows how old the newest data is.

How accurate is this tracker?

Positions are typically within a few kilometers, which is plenty for seeing where a satellite is or when a train passes over you. Accuracy drops the older the data gets and after a satellite changes its orbit.

What was the line of lights I saw in the sky?

A straight line of evenly spaced lights moving together is almost always a Starlink train from a recent launch. Set your location and drag the time slider back (up to 6 hours) to when you saw it; if a pink group passed over you then, that was it.

You need three things at once: a recent launch passing over your area, a dark sky where you are, and the satellites still in sunlight above you. That only happens for short windows after dusk or before dawn. Cloud cover and city lights also hide fainter passes. The pass list shows when all three line up.

The counter above the map shows the live number. On September 24, 2026 the tracker showed 11,106 Starlink satellites in CelesTrak’s catalog.

About 7.6 km/s, over 27,000 km/h, at the altitude where most of them orbit. That takes them around the Earth roughly every 94 minutes. Tap any satellite to see its current speed.

It shows every Starlink satellite in CelesTrak’s public catalog. Satellites from a launch in the last day or two may not appear yet.

Is my location stored?

Only in your own browser, so the page remembers it next time. It is never sent to Dishy Central. Use “Forget my location” to remove it.

Disclaimer

This tracker is an independent tool and is not affiliated with Starlink or SpaceX. It uses publicly available orbital data for information and education only. For official information about Starlink service and coverage, visit starlink.com.

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