WHY SHOULD AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS TRACK SATELLITES?
If you are wondering this, good question! Right now, amateur astronomers are discovering and tracking asteroids, comets, discovering supernovae (both inter-galactic and extra-galactic), and discovering possible new planets in our own solar system. The question should actually be stated, “Why shouldn’t amateur astronomers track satellites?”. In my own view, there is a far greater practical purpose to tracking satellites than all the above combined. Our own satellite population directly serves us in the present. If anything should go wrong with an active satellite orbiting the Earth, many customers, and therefore millions of dollars, can be lost in very little time. We depend on our satellite population for our communications every single second of every single day. As far as near Earth asteroids are concerned, one MAY hit us within the next few thousand years. In my view, tracking artificial satellites to protect our valuable communications infrastructure is far more important than trac
