Another trail of Starlink satellites will be visible over the UK tonight

There will be an impressive light display from the Starlink satellites over UK skies this evening. 

Starlink is a fleet of thousands of satellites from Elon Musk and SpaceX that aims to provide low-cost internet in areas of the world that previously had no or poor connections. 

The firm has plans to extend the fleet too – they currently have permission to fly 12,000 satellites but this could increase to 30,000. 

They filed plans with the USA’s Federal Communications Commission which includes the plan to deploy SpaceX systems ‘over virtually all parts of the Earth’s surface’.

The aim here, in principle, is to ‘have the ability to provide ubiquitous global service’.

The satellites will appear as small and bright lights across the sky. If you’ve never seen them now is your chance as Elon Musk has announced they are planning on making them dimmer. 

Musk also says they will hopefully soon have 4,425 satellites in the sky.

The times they will be visible depends on where you live. 

The best time to see Starlink from Manchester is tonight at 10:35pm, but there are also other opportunities listed below!

Here are the dates and times for Manchester:

Thursday 14th May 2020:

10:35pm: Starlink-3, (bright) – visible for 6 minutes

Friday 15th May 2020:

09:35pm: Starlink-3, (dim) – visible for 6 minutes

11:11pm: Starlink-3, (dim) – visible for 3 minutes

Saturday 16th May 2020:

10:11pm: Starlink-3, (dim) – visible for 5 minutes

Starlink have created a special website you can check out for times near you here.