Satellites Visible Tonight from Ahmedabad

This page lists the satellites actually visible from Ahmedabad (23.0225°N, 72.5714°E) tonight, with the time each pass begins in IST, which direction to face, how high it climbs and how bright it gets.

A satellite being above the horizon does not make it visible. Four conditions must hold together: it must clear roughly 10° elevation, be lit by the Sun, your sky must be dark, and it must reach about magnitude 4.5 or brighter. From Ahmedabad several hundred satellites are above the horizon at any moment, and on most nights you can see only a handful of them.

At Ahmedabad's latitude of 23.02°, the sky becomes dark enough for satellite spotting around 19:54 IST in midsummer and around 18:24 IST at midwinter. That gives roughly 12.5 hours of usable darkness in December against about 9.6 hours in June, so winter evenings offer the longer viewing window.

Best time to see satellites from Ahmedabad

The strongest viewing window is the hour or two after sunset and before sunrise. In that period you are already in darkness while satellites a few hundred kilometres overhead are still catching sunlight. Deep in the night most low-orbit satellites pass into Earth's shadow and disappear, which is why pass lists thin out sharply after midnight.

Darker skies near Ahmedabad

Light pollution sets the faintest magnitude you can reach. For fainter passes, head to The Rann of Kutch — among the darkest skies in western India. Objects that are invisible from the centre of Ahmedabad are usually straightforward from there.

Which satellites are visible from Ahmedabad?

The International Space Station is the brightest, reaching magnitude -3 to -4 and crossing in three to six minutes. China's Tiangong station is next. Beyond those, large Earth-observation satellites such as Terra, Aqua, the Sentinel series and the METOP weather satellites make regular naked-eye passes, along with spent rocket bodies. Starlink satellites are visible too, most dramatically as a train of lights in the days just after a launch. GPS and NavIC satellites are never visible to the naked eye — they orbit about fifty times higher than the ISS.