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posted by martyb on Thursday May 30 2019, @02:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the 12000-points-of-light dept.

SpaceX satellites pose new headache for astronomers

It looked like a scene from a sci-fi blockbuster: an astronomer in the Netherlands captured footage of a train of brightly-lit SpaceX satellites ascending through the night sky this weekend, stunning space enthusiasts across the globe.

But the sight has also provoked an outcry among astronomers who say the constellation, which so far consists of 60 broadband-beaming satellites but could one day grow to as many as 12,000, may threaten our view of the cosmos and deal a blow to scientific discovery.

The launch was tracked around the world and it soon became clear that the satellites were visible to the naked eye: a new headache for researchers who already have to find workarounds to deal with objects cluttering their images of deep space.

"People were making extrapolations that if many of the satellites in these new mega-constellations had that kind of steady brightness, then in 20 years or less, for a good part the night anywhere in the world, the human eye would see more satellites than stars," Bill Keel, an astronomer at the University of Alabama, told AFP.

Noting that there are currently about 2,100 satellites aloft, the article continues:

If another 12,000 are added by SpaceX alone, "it will be hundreds above the horizon at any given time," Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told AFP, adding that the problem would be exacerbated at certain times of the year and certain points in the night.

"So, it'll certainly be dramatic in the night sky if you're far away from the city and you have a nice, dark area; and it'll definitely cause problems for some kinds of professional astronomical observation."

[...] If optical astronomers are concerned, then their radio astronomy colleagues, who rely on the electromagnetic waves emitted by celestial objects to examine phenomena such as the first image of the black hole discovered last month, are "in near despair," he added.

One of the most spectacular sights of my life was being out in the wilderness, far from local light pollution, and seeing the Milky Way shining so brightly that I could not make out any constellations for all the other stars that were now visible. I cannot imagine how concerned astronomers must be to face the prospect of taking long-duration "images' of faint astronomical bodies... and having a satellite fly past at a much brighter magnitude. What, if anything, can be done?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:02AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:02AM (#849194)

    Amateur astronomers usually don't have radio telescopes. Large governments do.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:06AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:06AM (#849195) Journal

    Speaking of radio and large governments, the U.S.A.'s FCC has authorized the SpaceX and OneWeb constellations. Case closed.

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @10:12AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @10:12AM (#849235)

      Speaking of radio and large governments, the U.S.A.'s FCC has authorized the SpaceX and OneWeb constellations. Case closed.

      Ah, I see, so the rest of the planet doesn't get to have a say about this LEO pollution for the aggrandisation of the twonk behind these things....

      I'd see the point if the sattelites were the *only* solution to the percieved problem they're there to 'fix', they aren't, this is all about an idiot with lots of money (ergo power) and the toys that the money and power provide him with to play with as he pleases, he thinks he's some sort of real life Jeff Tracey..

      It's all about him, and more money/power for him, If his schemes benefit anyone else, it's peripherally, and it's more by accident than design..

       

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 30 2019, @10:42AM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 30 2019, @10:42AM (#849242) Journal

        Starlink 11,927 satellites
        OneWeb 650 to 2,622
        Amazon 3,236
        Telesat 300
        Boeing, Samsung, Facebook = ?

        The satellites are designed to deorbit and burn up after about 7 years. If the world finds this utterly objectionable, it can be stopped. But more likely, there will also be a Chinese, Russian, Indian, European, etc. constellation.

        Astronomy will survive. There is no evidence that having even a million satellites in LEO is going to make ground based astronomy impossible.

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      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:53AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:53AM (#849254)

        Ah, I see, so the rest of the planet doesn't get to have a say about this LEO pollution for the aggrandisation of the twonk behind these things....

        Why do you hate capitalism? What are you, a terrorist?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:46AM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:46AM (#849215)

    Amateur astronomers usually don't have radio telescopes...

    There's one who does in my neighbourhood (not me).

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:53AM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:53AM (#849217) Journal

    Try Googling for images of 'amateur radio telescopes' to discover just how wrong you are.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @09:31AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @09:31AM (#849231)

    The problem here is only with visual light, not radio telescopes.

    Seeing an occasional satellite is interesting, and the ISS is bright enough to see even under suburban lighting conditions. But you wouldn't want the whole sky to be full of satellites.

    At least everyone more or less agrees that too many visible satellites are a bad thing.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @12:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @12:09PM (#849258)

      From TFS: If optical astronomers are concerned, then their radio astronomy colleagues, who rely on the electromagnetic waves emitted by celestial objects to examine phenomena such as the first image of the black hole discovered last month, are "in near despair," he added.