Question... UFO's or satellites?

Ok I'm new to this site, so bear with me folks..

I have a question to ask. I can go out any night I want.... spend an hour looking at the skies and without fail I will see white objects going across the sky at very high altitude and apparently very high speed - occasionally these will be very bright and appear to be at a much lower trajectory...

From my limited understanding - most of these white objects (the ones that appear at high altitude) are probably satellites, is that assumption correct? How can I tell the difference between something that is a satellite and something that is not? What are the characteristics?

I can usually tell that something is a satellite because it's course doesn't change; it just goes in a straight line.

Planes....ufos go in a straight line how can you tell the difference from them at night ?!?

Originally posted by bleargh
Ok I'm new to this site, so bear with me folks..

I have a question to ask. I can go out any night I want.... spend an hour looking at the skies and without fail I will see white objects going across the sky at very high altitude and apparently very high speed - occasionally these will be very bright and appear to be at a much lower trajectory...

From my limited understanding - most of these white objects (the ones that appear at high altitude) are probably satellites, is that assumption correct? How can I tell the difference between something that is a satellite and something that is not? What are the characteristics?

I've been seeing them as well,and my initial thought was satellites,because they appear to be way up there(much higher than the planes and military craft in my area),and they do appear to travel in a straight line(usualy North to south,or vice versa).BUT-I have noticed a couple of times that when they are in sight and a military craft happens to be in the general area or approaching the vicinity,they quickly FADE OUT...That definitely caught my interest and made me wonder exactly what it might be,since it appears to not want to be seen.

All in all,it looks like a star that is moving to me,as if it is self illuminated.

Thats more or less what I've been seeing, but I'm unsure about the fading in and out of the objects... whether its just passing cloud or earth shadows or something .... whatever they are, once you find one of them in the sky, they grab your attention

Anyone further info?

Try these tools from NASA, specifically the J-Pass tool:

science.nasa.gov...

It will help determine if that light you saw really was a satellite. Those tools obviously don't have ALL the satellites in them, but they will point out a great number of them that may be flying overhead at the time.

Check out the J-Track 3D tool. Turn on all satellites and you will see just how crowded it is up there.

edit- I forgot to mention to be patient with the J-Track 3D tool. It takes a while to load the orbit data for 500 satellites. You may even have to close and reopen the site to get it to load. Depends on how busy the servers are.

[edit on 7/22/2004 by RivyBeAsT]