Its amazing sometimes how bright objects can be. There are also a lot of highly visible satellites and objects. There is a group of objects called visible.txt full of about 100 of the sky's most visible objects.

We generate these TLEs each hour and put them on our three sites.

These days there are so many tracking programs for your PC, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux. I even have one on my iPhone!

They not only show you on the screen, but give you pass predictions, so you know what time, what direction and elevation as well as the path. Its now like shooting fish in a barrel!

In the old days they were DOS programs only (pre Windows days), not to mention these programs did not take kindly to the TLEs. They had to be de-osculated and redone at the ascending node of the orbit (and believe me that was a pain).

These days I have written scripts and the server does everything for me. Not only logs into Space Command, gets all the data, sorts them into groups, stores them on the sites, even emails out on lists at the required intervals.

You would think this gives me more leisure time - well I thought so but sadly not