I understand why we can’t see stars during the day: the sun illuminates the atmosphere and effectively blots them out. But why can’t we see low earth orbit satellites, which are not exactly “outside” the atmosphere? If they’re inside, shouldn’t we see them reflecting sunlight back to us?
You can actually see ISS during the day, but that thing is so small in your perspective you have to use a telescope to actually see it zoom by, and even then it’s just a small dot. Satellite is way smaller than ISS its practically invisible.
Here’s a photo of the ISS with the sun in the background for scale: https://petapixel.com/2025/06/20/once-in-a-lifetime-photo-of-iss-crossing-the-sun-as-solar-flare-erupts/
Ohh i watched Destin’s video about it and they got the footage themselves using a telescope.
https://youtu.be/lepQoU4oek4
That Smarter Every Day video is awesome - I’ve used a similar setup with my 8" telescope and a solar filter to spot the ISS during transit, but for regular sattelite spotting during day I’ve found having a portable power station really helps when doing field observations away from outlets (the guys at gearscouts.com have a great comparison guide for astronomy-suitable ones).