Star light, star bright ... better yet, a satellite

Satellites range from softball-size to 15-by-6-footers such as the Lacrosse series and the European Space Agency's Envosat, an environment monitor. Many small, relatively inexpensive satellites - some go up as placeholders for licensees planning later launches - will never be seen from backyards.

Hard-core watchers become immersed in the arcane. Occasionally a satellite will be lost while having its orbit adjusted. "Once they start to tumble - game over," says Pinizzotto, who first saw satellites as a child when his father pulled him outside to see a passing Echo (an early US communications satellite).

Hobbyists have been known to time a tumbler's flashes to determine spin rates. Some "X-Files" types even eye surface-area-to-mass ratios, says Grego, in hopes of sorting possibly secret satellites from space debris.

The government has been frosty toward private observers. "The less people know or think they know about what we have, that is certainly our preference," a National Reconnaissance Office spokesman told the Associated Press.

"I think amateur observers have improved the US space-surveillance-network catalog, even on unclassified objects," says Grego. "They check up on things that don't get high priority. They find errors more quickly."

Plenty of satellite-watchers harbor a simpler fascination.

"If you go to a star party, where people go out to look at the stars with telescopes, and a satellite goes overhead, people always ooh and ahh," says John Goss, secretary of the Astronomical League, a 17,000-member association of astronomy clubs. "It's kind of a mark of human achievement that is somewhat out of reach, in the unknown, yet there it is, right there," he says of the allure.

Mr. Goss is not starry-eyed about artificial orbiters. "If you're an astrophotographer and you're taking pictures of star clusters or nebula, you don't want a satellite streaking across your picture."

Others see the far reach of mankind as being worth a glance. Some 200,000 Americans call themselves at least occasional amateur astronomers. If they'll come out for a comet, they might want to see the Space Shuttle transit the moon.

"I have looked though an 8-in. telescope that was tracking the International Space Station when a shuttle was docked to it," says Michael Bakich, an associate editor at Astronomy magazine. "And you could make out the outline ... that's kind of fun."

On this cold night, Pinizzotto holds out for one more fly-by, another rocket body that arcs close to the horizon, beneath the Pleiades star cluster.

"You're outside, you think you want to look at some satellite, and another one comes across your field of view that you didn't know about," he says. "And you just have to go figure out what it is."

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