Night visibility rules:
• Aircraft strobes: ~40 km
• Landing lights: ~80 km (aimed at you)
• Contrails by day: ~150 km
• Satellites: only sunlit ones (in Earth's shadow = invisible)
Day visibility rules:
• Aircraft body: ~10–15 km
• Contrails: up to 150 km at cruise altitude
Tips:
• Sound delay: ~3 s per km (heard 12 s late → ~4 km away)
• ISS is the most commonly misidentified object
• Stationary bright objects = likely Venus, Jupiter or a star
• Flashing every ~1 s = aircraft strobe
• Steady red+green = aircraft nav lights
• Smooth steady movement = satellite
Historical data:
The time slider shows data collected since this app was first started.
For historical data before that, a free OpenSky Network account is required.
Data Manager: Open Data Manager ↗ — start/stop
collection, view which time intervals have data, find good times to test.