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It's about time. A recent astronomy picture of the day shows the visible impact of Earth orbit spacecraft on astronomical imagery. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/a
by bitminer 7y ago
It's about time.
A recent astronomy picture of the day shows the visible impact of Earth orbit spacecraft on astronomical imagery.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191013.html http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191013.html
Astronomers will need precise orbital parameters of all s/c in their telescopes' field of view, so they can avoid deceptive data from known s/c. The data and processing issues will be significant. Obstructive? Destructive? Career limiting? TBD.
The article mentions only high-profile large telescopes. In fact there's hundreds that have scientific significance. Helping hundreds or thousands of observers eliminate local Earth orbiting s/c interference in their observations is hard. And, currently, unsupported by these companies.
They use the public resource, outer space, for their own good. And pollute it for others.
- carapace 7y agoThat link goes to "A Stellar Jewel Box: Open Cluster NGC 290".
- denton-scratch 7y agoIn radio astronomy, they build interferometers, with very large baselines, to give resolution equal to a dish the size of the baseline. AFAIAA, they can also synthesize a baseline by taking images 6 months apart, giving an effective baseline the width of Earth's orbit. I don't know how an optical interferometer works, but I believe such things have been built. I would have thought that an optical interforometer could be configured to just "not see" the passing satellites. I think that seems to be a mere technical problem for telescope builders, and not a fundamental problem that the rocket-men have to solve.