What's Crossing the Sky Tonight

The brightest thing up there — a steady, brilliant white point gliding silently across the sky in a few minutes, not blinking like a plane.

A huge, flat communications satellite with a tennis-court-sized antenna — when its panel catches the Sun it can flare brighter than almost any star, a startling slow, steady point. One of the brightest artificial objects in the sky.

A tidy row of evenly-spaced lights drifting in single file — a freshly-launched batch, best in the hour after dusk. They fade as they climb into Earth’s shadow.

Like a fainter ISS — a steady, fairly bright point crossing smoothly and silently. No flashing lights.

A modest, slow-moving point near the southern horizon — only for sharp eyes from a dark site, since Hubble never climbs high from most latitudes.