1. With an undergrad physics degree I ought to be able to calculate how long an LEO satellite should take to cross the sky, but I didn't for the original posting. Six minutes was a guess based on watching them myself. (Added after original posting: If the observer is at (1,0), he can observe everything right of the line x=1. If the satellite is in a circle of radius 1.03, the length of the observable arc is twice the inverse cosine of 0.97, or about half a radian. Since the entire orbit is about 90 minutes, dividing by 4*pi gives about seven minutes for the traversal.)
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