Satellites Visible Tonight from Jaipur

This page lists the satellites actually visible from Jaipur (26.9124°N, 75.7873°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 Jaipur several hundred satellites are above the horizon at any moment, and on most nights you can see only a handful of them.

At Jaipur's latitude of 26.91°, the sky becomes dark enough for satellite spotting around 19:51 IST in midsummer and around 18:04 IST at midwinter. That gives roughly 12.8 hours of usable darkness in December against about 9.3 hours in June, so winter evenings offer the longer viewing window.

Dry desert air means excellent transparency once you clear the city glow.

Best time to see satellites from Jaipur

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 Jaipur

Light pollution sets the faintest magnitude you can reach. For fainter passes, head to The dunes past Pushkar or the Aravalli ridges outside town. Objects that are invisible from the centre of Jaipur are usually straightforward from there.

Which satellites are visible from Jaipur?

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.