Listen to the satellites above you
Every active satellite passing over you plays one note, at the moment it is highest in your sky. The positions are real, worked out live in your browser from public orbital data.
Loading the satellite catalog…
Instruments
- Very low orbit: chimes
- Low Earth orbit: electric piano
- Sun-synchronous: kalimba
- Medium orbit, navigation: flute
- Highly elliptical: singing bowl
- Geostationary: the drone
How to read the map
- You are in the middle. Around you is the ground, seen from above with north up. The faint rings are 60° and 30° up in your sky; the edge of the circle is your horizon.
- Each moving dot is a real satellite with its trail, coloured by its instrument (key above). Most fly low enough, like Starlink, to be drawn right over the land beneath them; higher ones sit where you would see them in your sky. The still blue arc is the geostationary belt, 36,000 km up.
- Nothing is picked at random: each satellite plays one note when it reaches its highest point in your sky, and a ring appears where it is.
- Underneath, a soft pad moves slowly through four chords and every note is taken from the chord of the moment, so it is calm enough to leave on.
Tap a dot to see what it is.
Listening to
Best with headphones: satellites in the east sound on your right, the west on your left.
Speed
Now playing
Waiting for the next satellite to reach its highest point…
What you are hearing
- Each satellite plays once per pass, at the moment it is highest in your sky. That is also when it is closest to you.
- The kind of orbit it is in picks the instrument.
- Its height picks the octave. Lower orbits move faster, so they sing higher.
- The orientation of its orbital plane picks which note of the current chord it plays. Satellites sharing a plane share a note, so a Starlink train taps out a rhythm.
- How high it climbs sets how loud and how bright it is. Where in the sky it climbs sets where it sits between your left and right ear.
- Geostationary satellites never move in your sky, so they hold the low drone. The higher the belt stands in your sky, the fuller it sounds; near the poles it hugs the horizon and the drone fades to a whisper.
- Under the notes a soft pad moves through four slow chords, 16 seconds each, and every note is taken from the chord of the moment. While the Sun is up the chords are major; after dusk they turn minor.
Hear another sky
Near the equator the geostationary belt arcs high overhead and the drone is full. In Svalbard or at McMurdo Station the belt hugs the horizon and the drone is barely there.
Where the data comes from
Orbits are the latest CelesTrak element sets for every active satellite in the catalog, propagated with SGP4 in your browser. Nothing is invented: if no satellite passes, nothing plays. Positions are approximate and not for operational use. The map and the city list come from Natural Earth (public domain).
Build on the same data
This page runs on one free endpoint. Every active satellite's orbital elements, in one response, with no key needed.
curl https://www.orbitalwiki.com