With clear sky forecast for the week its a good time to step outside the house look up and view the stars with a number of things happening this week from Meteor showers to, fantastic sunsets and sunrise and the starlink satellite train passes.

Tonight once the sun sets and the sky turns dark a train of Elon Musk’s Starkink satellites will able to be seen shining brightly over Irish skies.

Tonight will see clear sky's over Ireland with very little cloud.

These set of satellites where launched Thursday, April 16, from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

PASS TIME OVER IRELAND

The satellites will come into view from the from SOUTHWEST and exit to the EAST. They will come into view around 9:57 pm tonight Monday 20th April 2020. There will be around 30 or more Satellites passing over in a 20 minute period.

There will be a second pass at 11:30pm tonight looking west but this will not be as bright as the earlier pass but satellites may be still visible.

SpaceX plans to launch some 12,000 of these satellites in all. SpaceX – and astronomers around the world – have been surprised at their brightness in the night sky, and many worry that our night skies will become polluted with these SpaceX Starlink satellite trains, as they’re sometimes called. Many fear they will adversely affect studies of the universe around us that can be done from the ground.

Last I heard, SpaceX was trying to find a way to make future satellites less bright. But so far they haven’t accomplished it. The next SpaceX satellite launch will be this week, April 23.

Bottom line: Skywatchers in western Europe last night were stunned to see a line of bright satellites, perhaps 30 according to some estimates, trailing each other across the night sky on April 19, 2020. They were part of the SpaceX Starlink fleet and will have another chance tonight to view them.