SpaceX satellites' effect on night sky can't be eliminated, astronomers say:
Broadband satellites being launched by SpaceX and other companies will inevitably have a negative impact on astronomers' ability to observe the night sky, according to a new report by astronomers. There are no mitigation strategies that can completely eliminate the satellites' impact on astronomical observations—other than not launching satellites at all—but the report includes recommendations for how satellite operators can minimize disruption and how observatories can adjust to the changes.
The report released this week is titled, "Impact of Satellite Constellations on Optical Astronomy and Recommendations Toward Mitigations."
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SpaceX Satellites' Effect on Night Sky Can't be Eliminated, Astronomers Say
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(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:34PM (7 children)
If they are whining now, just wait until Musk completes his Dyson Sphere. At least all the Teslas will get charged.
(Score: 3, Troll) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:47PM (6 children)
Satellites trace predictable paths and observations can be edited to remove the satellite artifacts based on their predicted and observed paths.
As massive as the Starlink, Amazon, and whoever arrays are, they obscure less than 0.0001% of the night sky (unless you are observing on the frequencies they transmit on), and their transit times across items of interest are fractions of a second. They have gone to astounding efforts with deformable mirrors and guide star tracking to mostly eliminate atmospheric distortion, a little time-space editing to disregard satellite transit artifacts is trivial by comparison.
The astronomers who are complaining are whiny bitches, period.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:11PM
"all they have to do"
The easiest problems in the world are those that one doesn't understand nor have to do.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:34PM (1 child)
It is not that simple. Long exposures can't simply be switched on and off and it is not simple to subtract a time slice of the data since the exposures are of a static image. Yes they could develop some cameras and systems that do a pretty good job, but a) not sure how effective it would be or what impact it would have on quality, and b) it takes time and money to overhaul existing equipment.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:26AM
Do you math much? Mean is mean / if you're switching off pixels, stop accumulating denominator while the pixel is switched off.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @09:17PM (1 child)
Yes, and we'll just fill in the obscured sections with random data. This just in: purple oblong planet discovered less than ten nanoparsecs away!
And how much of the night sky does, say, a newborn star in the Andromeda cluster occupy?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:30AM
If you are observing a distant object with a smaller than satellite radial measurement, you simply throw out those frames while the satellite is crossing.
This is many many orders of magnitude simpler than correcting atmospheric distortions, and has zero hardware requirements.
Every backyard geek with a CCD on their scope post processes more complex problems in software all the time, "professionals" who spend all their time doing observation and sharing data could develop predictive satellite tracking software among themselves, in fact, they already have for all the junk that's already up there - this is just adding more lines to the database table.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @09:30PM
More cost effective and greater value to apply those edits and random data replacements into a standalone box that all the potential users of starlink(tm) can fritter away their time on. Will be of same quality and value as what the get from the internet anyway.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:39PM (9 children)
If something belongs to the Moon first, it's an optical astronomy observatory.
Why there is no one sitting over there for past 50 years already?
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:43PM (8 children)
Or a huge radio dish built into a crater on the far side.
We're too busy funding the military-industrial complex to spend that much money on astronomy. Also, I think Hubble has been serving well. Here's hoping they get James Webb into orbit and functioning properly.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:30PM (4 children)
Even that is small potatoes...
"QE-cloud (that’s where central banks ditch all current pretense and simply start buying up the clouds passing over them in the sky..."
It is a bottomless pit. We stopped counting a long time ago. All part of the insane clown posse (to steal a most fitting term), that still(!) has widespread support.. The event horizon is closer than it appears
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:39PM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:52PM
QE is also a pretext for austerity when they tell us there's no money left for social services or a decent wage to keep up with expenses. Real money is being stolen from our accounts in this fashion. Too bad everybody is arguing over bullshit, can't even agree on the color of the sky any more. Looking at the same thing, one says it was the butler, the other says it was Colonel Mustard
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @07:53PM (1 child)
The MIC is less of a problem because that money actually gets spent on something, so a fraction of it actually goes to wages. QE and other such gimmicks are not only a bigger pool but are a pure drain on the economy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 30 2020, @04:02AM
In other words, paying an enormous number of people to avoid productive work. I think the MIC is an enormous drain on society and the economy because of stuff like that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:36PM (2 children)
We've already spent far more than what would be needed for observatories on the far side of the Moon. It's not lack of funding holding us back, but that MIC. Just as in the military proper, there's plenty of spending, but it's inefficient on a scale that will be hard for future doddering bureaucracies to match.
Unfortunately, a great example of the MIC in action. How many James Webb telescopes could they have launched for the price of this one?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sgleysti on Sunday August 30 2020, @03:09AM (1 child)
I find all the cost overruns and delays unsurprising given the incredible technical complexity involved.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 30 2020, @04:46AM
A particularly glaring example of this was a NASA study on the development of the Falcon 9 vehicle which found that NASA would have priced the development of the vehicle for ten times [soylentnews.org] what SpaceX actually spent on it! That's not counting the inevitable cost overruns and delays which SpaceX experienced and NASA would have yet to experience!
In the past, I've been accused of NASA bashing. But stuff like this happened throughout NASA's existence. It's not a fluke.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:49PM (2 children)
Musk's "space internet" was originally going to be around 30,000 sats, and that is "at least", as there have been mentions of 100,000 or more. Then you got Bezos wanting his own version, so possibly another 30-100k sats.
Facebook, Google and Microsoft have been trying Balloons and drone internet, but perhaps in future they will go the broadband sat route as well (especially if SpaceX proves the concept workable).
Not to mention that having a global spanning satellite communication network is potentially very useful militarily as well as in civilian life (think like GPS), meaning other countries may want their own versions up there as well, so they don't rely on the USA. This is assuming of course, that no other companies get the idea to loft their own sat network into space.
If things continue the way they have started, the crowning achievement of making space transport much cheaper, may well be to fill near earth orbit with so much junk, that doing any kind of earth based astronomy will be almost impossible (not to mention ruining the night sky in general).
One silver lining is that most of the sats will be low earth orbit, and will need constant boosting to not fall back to earth. It means if one stops working, contact is lost, or even if there is an impact causing a mess up there, all the bits will fall down by themselves relatively quickly. Last thing we need for future space transport is a cloud of debris hanging in orbit for decades or more.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 29 2020, @03:51PM
Put them in the 400km to 600km zone. Eliminate the ones planned for 1,200km and higher.
There should be a couple batches of sun-shaded "darksats" up there by now, but the article doesn't discuss whether they work or not. It probably won't eliminate the effects entirely, but they might not be done tweaking them yet:
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-darksat-astronomy-impact-photos/ [teslarati.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:42PM
inmates of a prison planet don't need amateur astronomy.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by oumuamua on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:00PM (2 children)
Why are all these satellites up there? because launch costs have fallen.
Get more telescopes up in orbit!
No need for ground relays, connect with the Starlink constellation and control your telescope over the internet.
And maybe Mr. Musk can give astronomers a big discount on the launch and the Starlink connection :)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:36PM
1. SpaceX Starlink RUINS ground-based astronomy FOREVER.
2. Universities are forced to launch space telescopes using SpaceX Starships.
3. Profit!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @06:45PM
i don't know anything about astronomy, but i was thinking along the same lines. musk could do it for PR too. satellite telescopes or an observatory on the moon and give away time to amateur astronomers. that would be cool if anyone could schedule time on a space telescope for free or cheap.
(Score: 4, Funny) by nostyle on Saturday August 29 2020, @05:06PM
I don't understand why they can't simply paint them black. It will keep birds from flying into them and dying as well.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @08:16PM (1 child)
That's nothing, have you heard about that fancy thing called gas lamp? You literally have to go out of town to do any astronomy during night. I shudder what will happen if it turns out that electrical current can be used to produce light. You would literally have to go to some desert or mountains to do any observations.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @10:01PM
Black Skies Matter!
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday August 30 2020, @03:34PM
In my current situation I am 100% in favor of sat internet that is affordable. Iridium I must say isn't an affordable option, so anything else as an option would be fantastic. Yes, this is all completely my self-interest speaking. But let's be honest here - that is all anyone else commenting here is doing as well. Mentions of military industrial complex? Laughable. Considering it's only ~13% of our budget, and it maintains the existence of countries like Singapore, HK, and Taiwan, as well as many other countries that would instantly cease to exist as autonomous entities if the USA empire ends.