Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

https://www.iau.org/public/images/detail/ann19035a/

by tbeutel • 7 years ago

69 27 7 years ago

chomp• 7 years ago

It's worth pointing out that airplane and satellite trails have long been a problem in astrophotography, and there's many techniques that exist to remove them in the stacking process.

kortilla• 7 years ago

“Although this image serves as an illustration of the impact of reflections from satellite constellations, please note that the density of these satellites is significantly higher in the days after launch (as seen here) and also that the satellites will diminish in brightness as they reach their final orbital altitude.”

notatoad• 7 years ago

I've never seen a caption on a photo be so blatantly pleading with internet commenters to not get angry.

garmaine2• 7 years ago

Also, not mentioned, satellite trails are only an issue just around twilight and only near the horizons, both of which are bad seeing conditions for telescopes.

SiempreViernes4• 7 years ago

"Just" being several hours, cutting shorter the finite amount of dark time available.

astro123• 7 years ago

Here's a statement [1] by one of the largest upcoming surveys, LSST. At least for them, this isn't going to be too much of a problem as,

1) Exposures are fairly short and frequent and so pixels contaminated by these satellites can be easily rejected. 2) There is a huge amount of resources (relative to other projects) going into the image pipeline for this project.

I don't actually know in details how much this will affect other types of observations though. [2] is the IAU's statement (that goes with that image), which points out some types of observations that might be more affected.

[1] https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increa... [2] https://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann19035/

SiempreViernes4• 7 years ago

It's great that the LSST can survive this, but there's not much point to building it if all the spectroscopy follow up is killed by efforts to put facebook in front of every face in the world.

Spectroscopy is the fundament on which modern astronomy is built, and it inherently takes long times even with big mirrors. Getting a satellite in the field of view as you take your spectrum most likely means having to start over, and you run out of usable darkness faster.

zamadatix3• 7 years ago

If it can be cheap enough to send 10s of thousands of internet satellites into orbit every 5 years perhaps the same innovation will help drive cheaper space based observance where light pollution, radio pollution, satellite/airplane streaks, and usable darkness aren't a problem.

miemo• 7 years ago

pretty snarky to suggest facebook is the only way developing countries would utilise the internet. access to knowledge to better their lives, even turn them into astronomers perhaps

madengr• 7 years ago

Damn it, can’t the entire country be wired with fiber? It was done 100 years ago with heavy conductors for electrification, then again with twisted copper pair for phone, but now in the 21st century no one can do shit.

Save wireless for what it’s actually useful for, mobile and extremely remote use.

meddlepal• 7 years ago

The answer is No because your local friendly NIMBY will kill such a project for some asinine reason.

Reelin• 7 years ago

your local friendly NIMBY

I think you misspelled "telecom lobby"...

https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...

jacquesm• 7 years ago

I tried laying fiber to an island in Canada. The locals were ecstatic about it, the telco did what they could to block it, then, when it was clear we were going to succeed they finally put in minimal broadband for the one village within the area we were going to cover killing all economies of scale that we might have found.

NIMBY had nothing to do with it.

jstr• 7 years ago

Here in New Zealand the Government just did this.

btilly• 7 years ago

1. This is the entire world, not the entire country.

2. In order to have wireless available for extremely remote use, it has to be everywhere.

3. The bandwidth that is planned will not be enough for more than a small percentage of traffic in dense urban areas.

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

Read an article saying that we might not see stars anymore...'gazillions' of satellites will be launched in space over time.

origami777• 7 years ago

I live in a big city and never see the stars now.

Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

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