Stellarium

Why do some satellites have a long blue trail, some have a long green trail and others have no trail?

Asked by Peter Sullivan

Why do some satellites have a long blue trail, some have a long green trail and others have no trail?

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Matthew Gates
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Khalid AlAjaji (kajaji) said : 		#1

Some satellites have their orbit lines displayed by default.

You can select which satellites to have their orbit lines displayed through the "Satellites tab" in the configuration window of the satellites plugin. See the instructions in the user guide here: https://sites.google.com/site/stellariumuserguide/plugins#TOC-Satellite-attributes

Each satellite group is given a color. You can find the groups in a pull down list under the "satellites" tab. Some satellites belong to more than one group like the ISS.

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Best Matthew Gates (matthew-porpoisehead) said : 		#2

So here's the answer from the horses mouth, so to speak.

I decided to colour code satellites based on a fairly arbitrary grouping. Weather satellites get blue... because... uh, water? Scientific get green because of trivial pursuit and because I like both green and science. Visible satellites are set to white and grey depending on the brightness. The colour is inherited by the trail if it is set to be displayed.

Because the trails are fairly heavy in terms of resources, I set only a small sub-set of the satellites to have visible trails be default. The selection I made was somewhat arbitrary - I chose those objects which I found interesting or which I expected other people to find interesting: bright or well-known objects... Thus the ISS and NOAA satellites (whose radio transmissions are easy to receive with fairly non-exotic equipment).

I hope that helps.
M

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Peter Sullivan (peter-sullivan1) said : 		#3

That explains it perfectly, thank you.