Back when I lived in California, I had a place to go to up in Truckee. It was a great place to lay out on the back deck and watch for satellites. Of course, there were a lot less back then, 20 years ago...

actually, there is so much litter orbiting earth right now they (...THEY!) will have to do something about it soon. This is all defunct satellites, which they become like after a few years. Seriously junk.

oh, and the relevant wikipedia article might interest you.

13,000 seems like the number you are looking for. Here is the slate article.

That article interests me abstractly, but I find myself incapable of reading it. What I really wanted was a number.

:)

active satellites? I don't know. But it should be hundreds. Think about the commercial ones, like telecommunications. Then think, scientific. I work with 10 of them. then think surveillance, from all kinds of countries...

Boy, you are difficult!

I think there are 600-ish active satellites right now, mudpuppie. carmina has it, though. There are somewhere between 8,000-13,000 items in orbit up there.

We see the inactive ones, too. Out of control doesn't mean "not reflective".

It sounds like you have a very interesting job, carmina.

This link will take you to the NASA J-track 3D page. (warning, pops up a java applet in its own window) From there you can track lots and lots and lots of satellites, space stations (ok, only 1 right now), and "other" in real time. That's right.. it'll show you where they are right now.

JPass (warning, java applet), on the other hand, will tell you when you can go outside and look up and see stuff passing overhead. I like to use it to show the ISS to my kids of an evening. We run outside about 3 minutes in advance of the pass, watch for it (usually a minute or two late), and watch it until it goes into shadow or below the horizon.

There are three general categories of orbit: equatorial (traveling more or less East/West), polar (more or less moving North / South) and geosynchronous (motionless against the stars in the equatorial plane).

The most of the communications are equatorial, the spooks are mostly polar and the geosynchronous are communications (including the "satellite dish") or weather / earth observation.

Here's a weather page with geosynchonous satellites looking back at you.

The geosynchronous satellites form a new zodiac in the sky, one whose appearance varies according to longitude and rotates through the celestial zodiac every 24 hours.

(Can't help but think about a satellite view of Mudpuppie in her yard. . .oh it's a totally decent thought. .she's, um, WEEDING)

Union of Concerned Scientists Active Satellite Database lists 814.

There are a few more than there used to be, not just because it's becoming customary for reasonably-developed countries to want their "own" satellite (e.g. Argentina, Nigeria), but because of satellite telephone "constellations" (mainly Iridium, which was pretty much sold to a US defense contractor for pennies, and is made up of 66 satellites), Globalstar (which has about 50), and GPS satellites (the US has "the" network, but Europe is creating its own).

The Iridium satellites make a neat "flare" when they reach the right angle between the viewer and the sun, so they're easy to see if you use a timing program.

Satellites that are inactive are put in higher orbits, which can make them harder to see.

Only a tiny fraction of space debris is visually obtainable even with good equipment.

Thanks, y'all. Thanks especially to warbaby, who answered my next question: Why do some go North-South while others go East-West, and will they ever crash into each other?

There's a great program for those who like looking at the universe... "Celestia is a free, interactive (real-time), 3D astronomy program. It doesn't just show you the sky as it can be seen from earth as most planetarium software does, but allows you to move to and view the universe from any point between the planets and the stars."
Three screenshots from the addon site (geostationary, NAVSTAR, and Iridium) illustrate how much stuff's up there. And that's just some of them. NASA says that "Did you know there are over eight thousand artificial objects orbiting Earth? Over 2,500 are satellites, operative and inoperative. (...)" So, 13,000 or 8,000, I guess no one really can tell.
Oh, and I've got no idea why there aren't lots of collisions. I'd guess that each of them are put into a specific, predetermined orbit, and there'd be no reason for them to deviate from that as there wouldn't be any forces to affect a change. Unless they ran into some of the garbage floating up there. Maybe someone else could come up with a better informed explanation, though.