Varying Stellarium satellite data

[Calter]

I tend to use Stellarium to debunk many "orb sightings" on reddit that are mostly just one or several satellites.

Recently I tried debunking this reddit post, and I used Stellarium to make a comparison with NOSS 3-4 r (COSPAR 2007-027B) and Starlink-6128. 11 hours later, I wanted to check something with the NOSS satellite and I found it several seconds behind. This kind of ruins the debunk since now the two satellites don't cross.

Does anyone know what could be causing this difference?

Also, is there any other sky viewer to do this kind of satellite matching that also looks clean for a layman to see?

This is how it looked 12 hours ago

This is how I see it now

 

[Mick West]

Sounds like it's not using a fixed TLE for the satellites. It's possible that it's just using the current TLE from Celestrack and then extrapolating backward. That's not very accurate. You need a fixed TLE from just before the time in question.

And I see you are using Stellarium Web, looking at its network activity, it seems to only load one satellite file, a JSON file with TLE inside some structured data (that gives different names and info for the satellites). It does not change this as you go back in time.

So the satellites you see in Stellarium Web are going to be inaccurate almost immediately, and get more inaccurate as days past.

You need to use the Stellarium App.

I will also try to fix Sitrec to include non-payload sats. Right now, it's having issues with space-track timing out with the query - possible because I'm requesting EPOCH, and I could work with CREATED. It might be a few days as I've got some other things to do.