Live picture
Where Starlink is right now In plain EnglishWhy are the dots moving?
Each dot is a Starlink satellite. They fly around Earth at about 27,000 km per hour, so each one circles the planet in roughly an hour and a half.
The map does not show a photo of right now. It takes each satellite’s last known path and calculates where it should be at this second. That is how every satellite tracker works.
The paths come from CelesTrak, a public source that collects orbital data. We download them once a day.
It is like knowing a train left at 9:00 at 100 km/h. You do not need a photo to know roughly where it is at 9:30.
CelesTrak →
Why are the dots moving?
Each dot is a Starlink satellite. They fly around Earth at about 27,000 km per hour, so each one circles the planet in roughly an hour and a half.
The map does not show a photo of right now. It takes each satellite’s last known path and calculates where it should be at this second. That is how every satellite tracker works.
The paths come from CelesTrak, a public source that collects orbital data. We download them once a day.
It is like knowing a train left at 9:00 at 100 km/h. You do not need a photo to know roughly where it is at 9:30.
CelesTrak →Every dot is a Starlink satellite, placed where it should be at this second and coloured by its estimated version. Scroll to zoom, drag to look around, click a dot to see its orbit and the ground it can serve. Zooming never stops the slow turn; a click or drag pauses it for thirty seconds.
How accurate is the map?
The paths are refreshed daily, and a satellite’s route changes slowly, so positions are good to a few kilometres for a day or two. At this zoom that is far smaller than a dot.
Satellites that have recently been launched or are being brought down can be a little further off. Nothing here is precise enough for anything except watching.
The count includes every object CelesTrak lists in its Starlink group, including satellites that are still climbing to their final orbit.
How this works, in one paragraph
Nobody photographs the satellites. Instead, public trackers publish each satellite’s path, a short set of numbers describing its orbit. Your browser uses those numbers to work out where each satellite is at this moment, sixty times a second. The paths are downloaded from CelesTrak once a day, which is plenty: a satellite’s route changes slowly, so positions stay good to a few kilometres for days.