5 ms·

Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

69 points by tbeutel 7y ago

madengr 7y 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 7y ago
  The answer is No because your local friendly NIMBY will kill such a project for some asinine reason.
  - Reelin 7y ago
    > your local friendly NIMBY I think you misspelled "telecom lobby"... https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
    - gwern 7y ago
      It can be both. 'Baptists and bootleggers'.
  - jacquesm 7y 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.
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      You could’ve signed up the people in advance into a yearly contract before even starting the build (with fair clauses that they can opt out at no charge if the service turns out different than expected, etc).
      - klagermkii 7y ago
        It doesn't make sense for the average individual homeowner to sign something like this. It's also very difficult to do a fair clause for service quality that works at scale for a contended residential service. Also a one-year contract still doesn't protect you from them setting predatory pricing for expiring contracts the next year. A large telco can play many games of attrition that are very hard for a small (non-VC) startup to win.
- jstr 7y ago
  Here in New Zealand the Government just did this.
- btilly 7y 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 7y ago
Read an article saying that we might not see stars anymore...'gazillions' of satellites will be launched in space over time.
- origami777 7y ago
  I live in a big city and never see the stars now.
chomp 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
  I've never seen a caption on a photo be so blatantly pleading with internet commenters to not get angry.
- garmaine 7y 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.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    "Just" being several hours, cutting shorter the finite amount of dark time available.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      Several hours at increasingly lower inclinations as satellites in LEO reflecting sunlight are low in the sky. Telescopes generally don’t point in that direction because of the amount of atmosphere makes for bad seeing.
astro123 7y 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-increased-deployment-satellite-constellations https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increa... [2] https://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann19035/ https://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann19035/
- SiempreViernes 7y 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.
  - zamadatix 7y 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.
    - planteen 7y ago
      The problem is size. The proposed constellations are possible because of small satellites. It's much easier to build a large telescope on the ground than it is in space. I don't see the small satellite revolution changing this.

69 points by tbeutel 7y 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 7y ago
The answer is No because your local friendly NIMBY will kill such a project for some asinine reason.
- Reelin 7y ago
  > your local friendly NIMBY I think you misspelled "telecom lobby"... https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/ https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
  - gwern 7y ago
    It can be both. 'Baptists and bootleggers'.
- jacquesm 7y 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.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    You could’ve signed up the people in advance into a yearly contract before even starting the build (with fair clauses that they can opt out at no charge if the service turns out different than expected, etc).
    - klagermkii 7y ago
      It doesn't make sense for the average individual homeowner to sign something like this. It's also very difficult to do a fair clause for service quality that works at scale for a contended residential service. Also a one-year contract still doesn't protect you from them setting predatory pricing for expiring contracts the next year. A large telco can play many games of attrition that are very hard for a small (non-VC) startup to win.
jstr 7y ago
Here in New Zealand the Government just did this.
btilly 7y 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 7y ago

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

origami777 7y ago
I live in a big city and never see the stars now.

chomp 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
I've never seen a caption on a photo be so blatantly pleading with internet commenters to not get angry.
garmaine 7y 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.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  "Just" being several hours, cutting shorter the finite amount of dark time available.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    Several hours at increasingly lower inclinations as satellites in LEO reflecting sunlight are low in the sky. Telescopes generally don’t point in that direction because of the amount of atmosphere makes for bad seeing.

astro123 7y 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-increased-deployment-satellite-constellations https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increa... [2] https://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann19035/ https://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann19035/

SiempreViernes 7y 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.
- zamadatix 7y 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.
  - planteen 7y ago
    The problem is size. The proposed constellations are possible because of small satellites. It's much easier to build a large telescope on the ground than it is in space. I don't see the small satellite revolution changing this.