19 ms·

Stacked images of the comet, photobombed by Starlink satellites

249 points by _Microft 6y ago

todd3834 6y ago
What are some of the potential consequences of this? I’m curious if stars getting photobombed is a signal pointing to a greater issue? If they can coat them in a way to not be reflective then will most astronomers be satisfied?
- falcolas 6y ago
  The greater thread has some data on the latter point - the latest satellites are coated, but it's not had much impact yet. Seems like this is light pollution taken to a completely new level.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    I remember reading Musk had to get permission from some US regulator (the FCC and/or FAA maybe?) in order to launch these satellites but is there any sort of international body that deals with this?
    - gpm 6y ago
      To a first approximation it's just the FCC, but the FCC does listen to and evaluate issues pertaining to light pollution, space debris, satellites falling to earth and landing on peoples heads, and so on despite that not being related to radios.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    SpaceX has abandoned the coating approach and is going with a shade approach, which works even better. The next set of satellites all have the shade.
- pmontra 6y ago
  We will exchange white lines for black lines. We won't be able to see through the satellites. Actually maybe a white line is simpler to remove than a black one on a black background.
  - jacknews 6y ago
    exactly, paint them green
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - gpm 6y ago
    Presumably exchanging white lines for transparent lines not a color. For larger projects which don't move around this can be augmented further by removing known satellite tracks instead of lines, or even not imaging areas when satellites are going to be there.
  - sp332 6y ago
    Black lines are far preferable because they do not contribute to the total amount of light collected. A momentary flash from a bright light can swamp the sensor, but a brief moment of blackness will leave the pixels' state much less disturbed.
    - Kye 6y ago
      This is why long exposure photographs of roads have light trails with no cars.
- zaarn 6y ago
  Any good astronomy imaging tool will remove temporary satellite flashes without much effort, provided you take a lot of exposures. If you naively stack them you get this of course.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > If they can coat them in a way to not be reflective Less reflective. I don't think there's a way to make them not reflective, and many, many astronomical objects are very dim.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > > If they can coat them in a way to not be reflective > Less reflective. I don't think there's a way to make them not reflective, and many, many astronomical objects are very dim. Vantablack[0] would probably be adequate for the timescales involved, at least for most terrestrial[1] observations: [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/this-object-has-been-sprayed-with-the-world-s-blackest-pigment-and-it-s-freaking-us-out https://www.sciencealert.com/this-object-has-been-sprayed-wi... [1] eg. I can easily imagine a similar but more severe problem for a lunar farside observatory if (when?) Starlink is expanded to provide internet coverage for the Moon's surface. Of course, the main reason for a farside observatory would be shielding from Earth's RF emissions, so just people needing and wanting internet access on farside is probably going to be a problem first.
gpm 6y ago
Easily solved in software by removing the small part of each frame that has a satellite in it. Satellite tracks are completely predictable. This is not novel.
- JBorrow 6y ago
  Perhaps true for amateur astrophotography but not the case for professional astronomy. Please see reporting in e.g. [1] and [2]. Note that simply putting telescopes in space is not a viable solution to these problems. [1] https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/starlink-astronomers-update/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/starlink-astronom... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21190273/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-constellation-astronomy-coating https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21190273/spacex-starlink-...
  - gpm 6y ago
    A few particularly large and particularly sensitive telescopes will have problems not easily resolvable by software, the vast majority of telescopes will not.
    - dx87 6y ago
      That actually sounds worse. Large expensive telescopes will have issues, but amateur astronomers will say there isn't any issue because the pictures they take with their smaller telescopes are cleaned up with software.
      - gpm 6y ago
        Arguably so (I'm going to generally stay out of value judgments), but do note that it's not all large expensive telescopes, it depends on the telescope.
        shadowgovt 6y ago
        ... which has always been true. Several observatories were built near cities. As light pollution from terrestrial sources have increased, they've found their expensive optical telescopes become toys, and have moved their scientific collection utility over to radio.
Nikkau 6y ago
It's bad faith, a normal stacking would have made them completely disappear, it's one of main reasons to do stacking, remove things which are not on all images, and it's works flawlessly. You have to actively tweak your settings to create this kind of photo.
- vilhelm_s 6y ago
  I guess the most basic way to stack (just add the images together) would leave them in, but > Almost every modern astronomical post-processing program has a rejection process (sometimes referred to as sigma-reject) to remove unwanted signals, though the exact sequence will depend on which program you use. https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/imaging-foundations-richard-wright/satellites-begone-how-to-remove-satellite-trails-from-your-astrophotography/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/imaging-foundati...
  - woko 6y ago
    From your link: > The way this process works is that, while averaging all of the pixels in a series of, say, 10 images, the program mathematically calculates which pixels fall far away from the mean value because they're much brighter (or much fainter) compared to the same pixels in other frames. The algorithm then discards those out-of-range pixel values so they don’t affect the final image. Wouldn't this process remove part of the comet trails as well as the satellite trails? I mean, I get how it works if all you care about is relatively static like distant stars, but would it work for this specific use case?
    - Sharlin 6y ago
      No, because the comet does not perceptibly move in the sky during the acquisition. All comet pixels are present in every image.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - 6y ago
whoopdedo 6y ago
The truth is most people will never notice the Starlink satellites. Because light pollution obscures the night sky so much you can only see the brightest of stars and nearly nothing close to the horizon. How many kids are hearing about this comet in the sky, rush out at sunset, and are then disappointed to only see the haze of city lights?
- daveslash 6y ago
  Truth is, most people never look at the night sky, period. But this isn't about most people; this is specifically about people who look at the sky a lot -- and those people typically seek out darker skies anyway.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    > Truth is, most people never look at the night sky, period. Truth is people never look at the sky period. Ask people when the moon is visible and most will say "during the night." But about half of the time, the moon is actually visible during the day. Wouldn't people realize this if they simply looked up?
    - cnity 6y ago
      That's because what they mean is that the moon appears more brightly at night, and I suspect you know this. You don't _actually_ think these people have never seen the moon during the day, surely?
      - catalogia 6y ago
        > That's because what they mean is that the moon appears more brightly at night, and I suspect you know this. No, I don't think that's the reason. The moon is frequently very bright during the day, not even remotely hard to see. Moreover, people are mostly outside during the day, meaning that most of the time they have the opportunity to see the moon will be during the day. I think the reason is that a supposed sun/moon - day/night dichotomy is perpetuated by culture (for instance, clock dials that use an image of the moon to symbolize the night) and that culture has a stronger impact on people's perception of the moon than their personal observations of the sky. I think they have seen the moon during the day, but the moon is very rarely the object of their attention. They see it, but rarely do they notice it. The reason for such a culture emerging seems obvious to me; the Sun's presence in the sky obviously correlates with daylight perfectly, making the sun an obvious symbol to associate with the day. But then what symbol would you use for the night? There's a clear day/night dichotomy, creating a demand for a symbol that's inverse of the sun. However there's no object in the sky that correlates so perfectly with the night. The moon isn't there half the time, but neither is any particular star. You could use generic stars, and sometimes that's done, but stars aren't necessarily visually distinctive. The moon is visually distinctive and so it's pressed into the roll of being the symbolic opposite of the Sun, even though a trivial glance into the sky reveals that it isn't actually opposite of the sun.
zelon88 6y ago
The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... > Why (on Earth) do you want to become a multi planetary species?? That's just an un-neccesarily foolish question. Why does a dog swim when you place him in a lake? > Have you ever tried to live in Antarctica or in the Atacama desert (I have)? I support science, exploration, tech development but not foolishness. Do you surround your house with roads to explore distant locations? Isn't that exactly what we've done as a society already?
- dx87 6y ago
  We did that, realized it was a mistake, and have started placing emphasis on working around nature, instead of tearing it down because it's more convenient.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    in the west, yes. In the places where real nature still exists; no, everyone's still happy to tear it down for convenience. evidence: Brazil's rainforest. Indonesian palm oil. Chinese mines. African, well, everything.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      I sometimes think the West overestimates how convenient or cohabitable nature is, because they were born into a tamed version of it. For most of human history, nature has been trying to kill us (if that's too anthropomorphic, we can go with the longer-form "The processes of nature are ambivalent to the survival of our species and individuals in that species, and there is no guarantee that the natural world is one habitable by humanity. Our species' history is shot through with plagues, floods, famines, and predation, and much of our technology was created to minimize that.")
- _Microft 6y ago
  > The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... "OP" refers to the OP of the Twitter thread. I'm just the submitter and do not share their view on being a multi-planetary species at all (I agree that it sucks to have streaks on your astro-photos, as I started taking them recently). We have to boldly go where no man has gone before. Edit: changed wording to restore split infinitive.
vayeate 6y ago
Space man bad is the new orange man bad
kome 6y ago
i can't believe people are suggesting to edit this away with photoshop... you are pointing at the moon and they are looking at the finger...
- tebruno99 6y ago
  It was caused by stacking incorrectly in photoshop to begin with.
- catalogia 6y ago
  That the image tweeted is a product of photoshop in the first place should be obvious to anybody who looks up. Go outside tonight and look up. Does the sky appear as it does in that tweet? Obviously not.
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    It's the result of some image processing. For example, there are like a hundred segments in the photo, but if you look carefully, they are quite aligned in ~27 almost parallel lines (probably the 27 satellites in different frames?)and a strange almost parallel segment (probably another unrelated satellite?).
  - nimih 6y ago
    And how about that black hole photo from last year? Definitely a hoax--black holes are supposed to be black, dummies!
    - catalogia 6y ago
      The image being the product of a computer program processing data does not mean that it's a hoax. That's moronic, and it's not even remotely what I'm talking about. Fixing the image is not a matter of "editing it out in photoshop". It's a matter of processing the data correctly in the first place, e.g. not editing it in. The author of the tweet stacked his images to show every satellite instead of removing every satellite, which is ass-backwards.
LeChuck 6y ago
I wonder if these things will have any effect on astronavigation. It would be sad to see such a cool practice become impossible.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Starlink Satellites are only visible for short periods just after sunset and before sunrise, because most of the night they are in the earths shadow.
  - LeChuck 6y ago
    Yeah. That's the problem. Celestial navigation can only be performed during twilight, as you need to be able to see both the horizon and celestial objects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight#Nautical_dawn_and_dusk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight#Nautical_dawn_and_dus...
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      I can't imagine it would; Starlink satellites are also moving. Quite fast. So don't do your celestial navigation by the moving thing and you'll be fine.
- catalogia 6y ago
  I don't see why they would. The stars typically used for astronavigation are very bright; brighter than starlink satellites. A brief web search leads me to believe typical starlink satellites have a magnitude of around 5 or more, while the stars typically used for astronavigation have magnitudes of less than three (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_for_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_for_navigation) Even if that weren't the case, it's easy for the human eye to distinguish a star from a LEO satellite; the satellite is the one that's moving fast. I see no reason the sailors couldn't simply ignore the satellites.
  - LeChuck 6y ago
    It was the brightness I was worried about, yes. Should've probably just looked it up myself! I don't think astronavigation is used in any serious capacity anymore, so in that sense it's a moot point. Still, it's a cool practice and it would've been too bad to see that go away.
ianmcgowan 6y ago
Apart from all the comments about this being a bad faith post, I wonder about the utilitarian argument, if you take it at face value. If you could provide decent internet at low cost to large parts of the world that are underserved, at the cost of ruining ground-based telescopes, is that a good trade-off? What if it's just certain kind of telescopes, or certain classes of astronomers (as this seems to be)?
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I think this is useful if we also consider that part of SpaceX's plan is to make launching satellites cheap (in fact, launching anything cheap). So while ground-based astronomy will suffer, space-based astronomy will get cheaper and easier. Presumably to the point where people who want to can subscribe to a Hubble-like satellite service and get all the space photos their hearts desire. Also, we made a similar trade-off a long time ago - most people live in heavily light-polluted cities, because we value having street lighting more than being able to see the stars.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    Cost of launch is not really main reason why we don’t see more space based astronomy. 1. Space is a hostile place, and developing telescope that works there is much harder. 2. There are very real limits on size and weight of what can be put there right now, and rocket equation is ruthless. 3. Any type of maintenance or upgrades are basically impossible, compared to earth based. 4. Adaptive optics were such a huge breakthrough, that basically negated need for most of space based telescopes.
    - gpm 6y ago
      I would call cost of launch to space the main reason, just not the only significant one.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Reasons 2 and 3 are big part of why launches of expensive. There's a feedback loop in space launches: they're expensive, therefore you launch less, so you need to add redundancies and spend more time ensuring the payload will work, which raises the development cost and increases mass, which makes launches less frequent and more expensive. Conversely, reducing the cost of access to space means you can send more stuff that's less robust, which shortens development time and makes it less expensive, and of course makes technological progress faster. Which translates to: suddenly space telescopes may be more affordable, and more of them will be launched.
valuearb 6y ago
This is pretty much a cherry picked worst case scenario. The comet is only visible right above the horizon after sunset for a brief period. Starlink satellites are also only visible low on the horizon, and only for brief periods after sunset and before sunrise, because their low orbits keep them in the Earths shadow the rest of the night.
- asdfadsfgfdda 6y ago
  Yeah its basically optimized to look bad. The satellites are relatively close to each other. In normal operation, there's no reason to have 30 different satellites in view. I suspect these satellites were very recently launched, so they are not in the normal sun-tracking orientation. Also, the comet is a wide object. A wide image is just more likely to have any satellite in view.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
How much sympathy can I really spare for a purely leisurely hobby like backyard astronomy vs. satellites, Starlink, and our space tech? To me it's like complaining that your photography hobby is harder now that more people can afford to travel and they get in the way of your favorite tourist shots. I'm sure there are good examples of trade-offs that matter here like the impact on terrestrial research telescopes, but a guy snapping a pic of a comet and ranting about it on Twitter frankly has the opposite effect on me.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  True, because professional astronomers, lucky them, are provided a completely different sky devoid of satellites, debris and other man-made objects.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    If we can make space travel cheap enough to get more Hubble-like telescopes up there, then yes, this. I believe that's part of the goal of SpaceX
    - wbronitsky 6y ago
      Yes, but the point is that we should do that first before polluting the night sky. There are also reasons for humans and animals to not want new, moving stars for reasons other than pure utility. At the very least, these shiny beacons are an insulting advertisement for Musk. Next, people will be defending a Pepsi ad on the moon or something. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/pepsi-advertisement-space/587608/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/pepsi-ad...
    - simion314 6y ago
      I am sure we will not have the space tech soon that can build giant telescopes in space, Hubble is small compared with the larger telescopes on the ground, and from what we can see today it takes decades to send a new telescope in space because you can't go and tweak it. I just hope the benefits are larger then the costs and we the public will not have to pay SpaceX to send telescopes in space to fix the issue SpaceX created.
shadowgovt 6y ago
That looks so cool.
irthomasthomas 6y ago
It's trivial to erase these things from photos. The photographer no doubt knows this, but that isn't the point. It's perfectly reasonable for scientists to want to capture accurate data on the space surrounding the main subject being imaged. Simply erasing the satellites from photos does not recover the data on the space behind. Any data from behind the satellites is lost forever. This photo keeps the satellites in order to visually demonstrate this problem. Remember that astronomy today is often done on a single pixel of data. Starlink blocks multiple pixels, and even ruins entire exposures when they flare up. This will make astronomical research, like searching for exoplanets, far harder and more expensive than it is today. Space telescopes are, and will always be, orders of magnitude more expensive than ground telescopes to launch, maintain and operate.
- claydavisss 6y ago
  Starlink will provide an immediate benefit to humanity, the astronomy performed otherwise, won't. Looking for exoplanets isn't a practical concern for humanity any time soon.
  - ganafagol 6y ago
    Odd perspective when defending technology from the same guy that wants to save humankind by literally colonizing other objects in space.
    - zdragnar 6y ago
      Not necessarily- exoplanets beyond our solar system really aren't going to be feasible to physically travel to until we can come up with something along the lines of faster-than-light travel. Given the lack of light pollution on Mars, I almost wonder if we wouldn't be better off doing all of our astrophysical study out there or in deep space anyway (assuming we have a steady supply of transit back and forth to transfer the data since streaming isn't likely to have good enough quality for a long time either). Then again, I am also not a fan of putting more satellites into orbit either... mostly just struck by your comment as being not terribly odd to me.
peroporque 6y ago
Ah yes, the rich first worlder wants to be able to use their 5k USD camera to take pictures of the sky. What do they care if poor people in rural Africa can develop their farm with better and faster access to the internet, or if children in central Amazons will be able to get reliable internet at school. The level of egocentrism is unbelievable.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't fulminate or post denunciatory rhetoric to HN. It only degrades this place even further. Also: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
  - peroporque 6y ago
    It is exactly what I said. People who don't see that there are waaay bigger problems in the world than taking hobby fotos of some stars.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ortusdux 6y ago
Each starlink group is inserted at a low orbit, booted up and tested, and then they boost themselves to a higher orbit over a period of a month or so. During this boost, they orient their panels horizontally to minimize drag. Once they reach their final orbit, they rotate their panels vertically, at which point their visibility goes way down (mag 5 (prior to the new coating) down from a mag 0). I've seen plenty of people saying some variation of "there are only 600 of these now, imagine what it will be like when there are 42k of them..." If I understand correctly, the number of bright satellites will be proportional to the launch rate, not the total quantity in orbit. Going off Wikipedia, they have launched about 1/8th of their 2024 goal, and the majority of the remaining satellites are destined for much higher (and dimmer) orbits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Constellation_design_and_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Constellation_design_...
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  >If I understand correctly, the number of bright satellites will be proportional to the launch rate, not the total quantity in orbit. Because the constellation needs constant replenishment, the launch rate (and hence the # of brighter satellites) will have to reach a steady state that is directly proportional to the size of the constellation. We can extrapolate that in the future this rate will actually be significantly higher than it is currently: They currently have permission to launch around 12,000 sats. They're launching around 250 per year. The current launch rate is only sustainable if each satellite lasts for 50 years. If you expand that to the proposed 42,000 constellation, 250 new satellites per year is only sustainable with a MTBF of around 150-200 years per satellite, which is nigh impossible in low Earth orbit. Using a lower (but still very generous and optimistic) MTBF of 10 years, Starlink will need to launch 4,200 satellites every year, about ~15x higher their current launch cadence. > the majority of the remaining satellites are destined for much higher (and dimmer) orbit Just about all of the satellites they've orbited so far are hanging out around 550km. SpaceX initially got permission to go as high as 1300km, but they've since changed their mind. The new plan (still pending FCC approval I believe) is to keep all of the satellites between 300-550km. So the future satellites will be as low or lower than the current ones.
sparker72678 6y ago
Anec-data, but in my shots of the comets there were 0 satellites and about 12 airplanes with flashing lights that I had to remove. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I get the frustration, and no doubt I'll be pissed when I have a shot that's more affected, but amateur astrophotography seems like the least-important reason to be concerned about Starlink. But then, the photo is going to get more attention, for sure.
- wl 6y ago
  Anecdotally, I took about 100 exposures of the comet last weekend with shutter speeds ranging from 10-20 seconds. There were satellite streaks in every exposure! I don't ever remember it being this bad.
- autokad 6y ago
  It doesnt matter the impact of amateur astrophotography's work, starlink doesn't have the right to take that from them. I do think we need to evaluate whether these costs are worth it. I go further. I myself think we need to take a second look at city light. I'd like us to begin working on making the milky way visible again.
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    I agree. Vast populations of people can't know their place in the universe because they physically can not see it. What can we do to avoid that? In suburbs it seams feasible to stop building / start removing streetlamps in neighborhoods that don't necessarily need them, but I don't know how that would work in bigger cities
    - kergonath 6y ago
      Better, more directional street lamps help, even in large cities. We can tune their wavelength to be less blinding as well. They do not need to illuminate the sky. More of them, and less powerful, would provide better light where it’s actually needed. The other side is to reduce emissions of aerosols and particles that scatter light in the atmosphere.
toohotatopic 6y ago
Wait till we have the first moon bases and there will never be a new moon again.
- f00zz 6y ago
  Can't wait!
kbenson 6y ago
Flipped on its head, I would say Starlink, or at least the underlying technology that makes it feasible (and it's all related, since it's all SpaceX) may be good for astronomy... eventually. Space based telescopes give a much clearer picture than land based ones. You can't have ubiquitous and/or (relatively) cheap space based telescopes without a thriving launch industry that reduces costs. You can't have that without innovation and competition in the space launch industry. You are unlikely to innovation or competition in that industry the without a market need. Starlink is the market need right now. Want lots of space telescopes to give you even better pictures? Don't kill off what's going to take you there before it begins. The astronomy industry needs to work with SpaceX to minimize the problem while also encouraging them (and anyone else working to drop costs to launch something into orbit) to succeed, not killing off or greatly delaying the oncoming age of ubiquitous and easy access to space telescopes because they are short sighted.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > Space based telescopes give a much clearer picture than land based ones. Aren't those far more expensive to launch and operate?
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Not necessarily? Starlink represents an order of magnitude improvement in both launch and hardware costs. And that’s with Falcon 9. Starship represents another order of magnitude improvement (or better, over time...).
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Right now? Yes. As I understand it you get much more capability for your size of telescope if in space, because you don't have to look through the atmosphere. If launch costs go down (which they are), and satellite components and labor to build operate become cheaper (because of increased general experience, supply of parts and labor, etc), then space satellites become cheaper. If we get better at assembling things in space (which we're only going to do after demand and experience in doing it), it might even be easier to make a larger telescope in space than on land eventually, and the stresses of gravity on the structure for the mirror are greatly reduced or eliminated. It looks like all the recent large telescopes are with segmented mirrors now anyway.[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_reflecting_telescopes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_reflec...
asdfk-12 6y ago
Perhaps to remedy the situation, SpaceX would do well to introduce a large fleet of freely-accessible amateur astronomy platforms with some kind of timeshare credit component? I ordered several images through a university terrestrial telescope as part of an astronomy course and it was a great experience to refine the object's orbital parameters based on the observations.
Alupis 6y ago
I find it astounding that just any old for profit company can decide to ruin a world-wide public resource just to turn a few bucks. In 2020. I'd expect that from something like the East India Company in the 1700's or something. Not a modern company in a modern society.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Do you shake your fist at every airplane that flies overhead too?
  - Alupis 6y ago
    The country agreed to that. One day the country may decide against it. No-Fly Zones can be created. A US company airplane passing over my house doesn't impact people in India, for example. Airplanes have proven utility. Airplanes proved their utility before bothering people worldwide.
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      The country agreed to the starlink satellites as well, considering they received FCC approval. The country can still decide against it and now allow any more launches, and the satellites that are up there will come down naturally in a few years time. You may even be able to forcibly deorbit them if they still have propellant left (not sure if they do or not). No-fly zones are almost always created for the government to do government things, and not for the direct benefit of the public (ie reducing airport noise for nearby residents). A US plane passing over your house doesn't impact people in India either negatively or positively(except for the consequences of global warming). These satellites passing over the US and India can equally benefit people in the US and India. It's not like starlink is a US only service and SpaceX is going to prevent anyone in India from having access. Satellites also have proven utility, as does the internet, which is why groups like the UN General Assembly HRC declared access to the internet as a basic human right.
      - Alupis 6y ago
tinus_hn 6y ago
That’s odd, I took a bunch of pictures of that same comet and saw no satellites at all. Did I do something wrong?
dvxvd 6y ago
im 100% against that commercial project is destroying my night sky.. its like building highway through my yard.. our already overglobalized world will be even more 'globalized' in the hands of few.. w t f..
aaron695 6y ago
How did we get to this cargo cult where sitting on our behinds taking photos of the stars and un-ironically posting on the internet supersedes mastering space. It's mostly the media, who care's not for science at all pushing this 'we should be outraged', but we eat it up. Starlink and others helping the world will also create a whole new genre for ground based space photography the super rich can get into, but this drama is so tiring.
mchusma 6y ago
If you want humans to become a space faring people, you need to accept the idea that there will be at least 1000x more things in space. People's comments here are generally insane to me. Let's go to other planets. Let's build a Dyson swarms of O'Neil cylinders with a quadrillion humans living in luxury. Let's keep the light of consciousness alive. Some things will change along the way, like amateur photography.
ineedasername 6y ago
There's a tension here, and I'm not saying that I know where the appropriate balance is-- but it's a tension between the positive societal impact that inexpensive and ubiquitous broadband may have, vs. the societal impact of scientific knowledge from ground-based observatories. I'm sure there's other ways of solving the broadband problem. I'm sure there are other ways of getting the astronomical data. I'm also pretty sure that all of them would have their own trade offs. Everything does. In this case, I think the unilateral approach that Musk is taking has hurt perception of the project as much as the trade offs represented by the project itself.

249 points by _Microft 6y ago

What are some of the potential consequences of this? I’m curious if stars getting photobombed is a signal pointing to a greater issue? If they can coat them in a way to not be reflective then will most astronomers be satisfied?

falcolas 6y ago
The greater thread has some data on the latter point - the latest satellites are coated, but it's not had much impact yet. Seems like this is light pollution taken to a completely new level.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I remember reading Musk had to get permission from some US regulator (the FCC and/or FAA maybe?) in order to launch these satellites but is there any sort of international body that deals with this?
  - gpm 6y ago
    To a first approximation it's just the FCC, but the FCC does listen to and evaluate issues pertaining to light pollution, space debris, satellites falling to earth and landing on peoples heads, and so on despite that not being related to radios.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  SpaceX has abandoned the coating approach and is going with a shade approach, which works even better. The next set of satellites all have the shade.
pmontra 6y ago
We will exchange white lines for black lines. We won't be able to see through the satellites. Actually maybe a white line is simpler to remove than a black one on a black background.
- jacknews 6y ago
  exactly, paint them green
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- gpm 6y ago
  Presumably exchanging white lines for transparent lines not a color. For larger projects which don't move around this can be augmented further by removing known satellite tracks instead of lines, or even not imaging areas when satellites are going to be there.
- sp332 6y ago
  Black lines are far preferable because they do not contribute to the total amount of light collected. A momentary flash from a bright light can swamp the sensor, but a brief moment of blackness will leave the pixels' state much less disturbed.
  - Kye 6y ago
    This is why long exposure photographs of roads have light trails with no cars.
zaarn 6y ago
Any good astronomy imaging tool will remove temporary satellite flashes without much effort, provided you take a lot of exposures. If you naively stack them you get this of course.
ardy42 6y ago
> If they can coat them in a way to not be reflective Less reflective. I don't think there's a way to make them not reflective, and many, many astronomical objects are very dim.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > > If they can coat them in a way to not be reflective > Less reflective. I don't think there's a way to make them not reflective, and many, many astronomical objects are very dim. Vantablack[0] would probably be adequate for the timescales involved, at least for most terrestrial[1] observations: [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/this-object-has-been-sprayed-with-the-world-s-blackest-pigment-and-it-s-freaking-us-out https://www.sciencealert.com/this-object-has-been-sprayed-wi... [1] eg. I can easily imagine a similar but more severe problem for a lunar farside observatory if (when?) Starlink is expanded to provide internet coverage for the Moon's surface. Of course, the main reason for a farside observatory would be shielding from Earth's RF emissions, so just people needing and wanting internet access on farside is probably going to be a problem first.

gpm 6y ago

Easily solved in software by removing the small part of each frame that has a satellite in it. Satellite tracks are completely predictable. This is not novel.

JBorrow 6y ago
Perhaps true for amateur astrophotography but not the case for professional astronomy. Please see reporting in e.g. [1] and [2]. Note that simply putting telescopes in space is not a viable solution to these problems. [1] https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/starlink-astronomers-update/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/starlink-astronom... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21190273/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-constellation-astronomy-coating https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21190273/spacex-starlink-...
- gpm 6y ago
  A few particularly large and particularly sensitive telescopes will have problems not easily resolvable by software, the vast majority of telescopes will not.
  - dx87 6y ago
    That actually sounds worse. Large expensive telescopes will have issues, but amateur astronomers will say there isn't any issue because the pictures they take with their smaller telescopes are cleaned up with software.
    - gpm 6y ago
      Arguably so (I'm going to generally stay out of value judgments), but do note that it's not all large expensive telescopes, it depends on the telescope.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        ... which has always been true. Several observatories were built near cities. As light pollution from terrestrial sources have increased, they've found their expensive optical telescopes become toys, and have moved their scientific collection utility over to radio.

Nikkau 6y ago

It's bad faith, a normal stacking would have made them completely disappear, it's one of main reasons to do stacking, remove things which are not on all images, and it's works flawlessly. You have to actively tweak your settings to create this kind of photo.

vilhelm_s 6y ago
I guess the most basic way to stack (just add the images together) would leave them in, but > Almost every modern astronomical post-processing program has a rejection process (sometimes referred to as sigma-reject) to remove unwanted signals, though the exact sequence will depend on which program you use. https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/imaging-foundations-richard-wright/satellites-begone-how-to-remove-satellite-trails-from-your-astrophotography/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/imaging-foundati...
- woko 6y ago
  From your link: > The way this process works is that, while averaging all of the pixels in a series of, say, 10 images, the program mathematically calculates which pixels fall far away from the mean value because they're much brighter (or much fainter) compared to the same pixels in other frames. The algorithm then discards those out-of-range pixel values so they don’t affect the final image. Wouldn't this process remove part of the comet trails as well as the satellite trails? I mean, I get how it works if all you care about is relatively static like distant stars, but would it work for this specific use case?
  - Sharlin 6y ago
    No, because the comet does not perceptibly move in the sky during the acquisition. All comet pixels are present in every image.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago

whoopdedo 6y ago

The truth is most people will never notice the Starlink satellites. Because light pollution obscures the night sky so much you can only see the brightest of stars and nearly nothing close to the horizon. How many kids are hearing about this comet in the sky, rush out at sunset, and are then disappointed to only see the haze of city lights?

daveslash 6y ago
Truth is, most people never look at the night sky, period. But this isn't about most people; this is specifically about people who look at the sky a lot -- and those people typically seek out darker skies anyway.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > Truth is, most people never look at the night sky, period. Truth is people never look at the sky period. Ask people when the moon is visible and most will say "during the night." But about half of the time, the moon is actually visible during the day. Wouldn't people realize this if they simply looked up?
  - cnity 6y ago
    That's because what they mean is that the moon appears more brightly at night, and I suspect you know this. You don't _actually_ think these people have never seen the moon during the day, surely?
    - catalogia 6y ago
      > That's because what they mean is that the moon appears more brightly at night, and I suspect you know this. No, I don't think that's the reason. The moon is frequently very bright during the day, not even remotely hard to see. Moreover, people are mostly outside during the day, meaning that most of the time they have the opportunity to see the moon will be during the day. I think the reason is that a supposed sun/moon - day/night dichotomy is perpetuated by culture (for instance, clock dials that use an image of the moon to symbolize the night) and that culture has a stronger impact on people's perception of the moon than their personal observations of the sky. I think they have seen the moon during the day, but the moon is very rarely the object of their attention. They see it, but rarely do they notice it. The reason for such a culture emerging seems obvious to me; the Sun's presence in the sky obviously correlates with daylight perfectly, making the sun an obvious symbol to associate with the day. But then what symbol would you use for the night? There's a clear day/night dichotomy, creating a demand for a symbol that's inverse of the sun. However there's no object in the sky that correlates so perfectly with the night. The moon isn't there half the time, but neither is any particular star. You could use generic stars, and sometimes that's done, but stars aren't necessarily visually distinctive. The moon is visually distinctive and so it's pressed into the roll of being the symbolic opposite of the Sun, even though a trivial glance into the sky reveals that it isn't actually opposite of the sun.

zelon88 6y ago

The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... > Why (on Earth) do you want to become a multi planetary species?? That's just an un-neccesarily foolish question. Why does a dog swim when you place him in a lake? > Have you ever tried to live in Antarctica or in the Atacama desert (I have)? I support science, exploration, tech development but not foolishness. Do you surround your house with roads to explore distant locations? Isn't that exactly what we've done as a society already?

dx87 6y ago
We did that, realized it was a mistake, and have started placing emphasis on working around nature, instead of tearing it down because it's more convenient.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  in the west, yes. In the places where real nature still exists; no, everyone's still happy to tear it down for convenience. evidence: Brazil's rainforest. Indonesian palm oil. Chinese mines. African, well, everything.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    I sometimes think the West overestimates how convenient or cohabitable nature is, because they were born into a tamed version of it. For most of human history, nature has been trying to kill us (if that's too anthropomorphic, we can go with the longer-form "The processes of nature are ambivalent to the survival of our species and individuals in that species, and there is no guarantee that the natural world is one habitable by humanity. Our species' history is shot through with plagues, floods, famines, and predation, and much of our technology was created to minimize that.")
_Microft 6y ago
> The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... "OP" refers to the OP of the Twitter thread. I'm just the submitter and do not share their view on being a multi-planetary species at all (I agree that it sucks to have streaks on your astro-photos, as I started taking them recently). We have to boldly go where no man has gone before. Edit: changed wording to restore split infinitive.

vayeate 6y ago

Space man bad is the new orange man bad

kome 6y ago

i can't believe people are suggesting to edit this away with photoshop... you are pointing at the moon and they are looking at the finger...

tebruno99 6y ago
It was caused by stacking incorrectly in photoshop to begin with.
catalogia 6y ago
That the image tweeted is a product of photoshop in the first place should be obvious to anybody who looks up. Go outside tonight and look up. Does the sky appear as it does in that tweet? Obviously not.
- gus_massa 6y ago
  It's the result of some image processing. For example, there are like a hundred segments in the photo, but if you look carefully, they are quite aligned in ~27 almost parallel lines (probably the 27 satellites in different frames?)and a strange almost parallel segment (probably another unrelated satellite?).
- nimih 6y ago
  And how about that black hole photo from last year? Definitely a hoax--black holes are supposed to be black, dummies!
  - catalogia 6y ago
    The image being the product of a computer program processing data does not mean that it's a hoax. That's moronic, and it's not even remotely what I'm talking about. Fixing the image is not a matter of "editing it out in photoshop". It's a matter of processing the data correctly in the first place, e.g. not editing it in. The author of the tweet stacked his images to show every satellite instead of removing every satellite, which is ass-backwards.

LeChuck 6y ago

I wonder if these things will have any effect on astronavigation. It would be sad to see such a cool practice become impossible.

valuearb 6y ago
Starlink Satellites are only visible for short periods just after sunset and before sunrise, because most of the night they are in the earths shadow.
- LeChuck 6y ago
  Yeah. That's the problem. Celestial navigation can only be performed during twilight, as you need to be able to see both the horizon and celestial objects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight#Nautical_dawn_and_dusk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight#Nautical_dawn_and_dus...
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    I can't imagine it would; Starlink satellites are also moving. Quite fast. So don't do your celestial navigation by the moving thing and you'll be fine.
catalogia 6y ago
I don't see why they would. The stars typically used for astronavigation are very bright; brighter than starlink satellites. A brief web search leads me to believe typical starlink satellites have a magnitude of around 5 or more, while the stars typically used for astronavigation have magnitudes of less than three (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_for_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_for_navigation) Even if that weren't the case, it's easy for the human eye to distinguish a star from a LEO satellite; the satellite is the one that's moving fast. I see no reason the sailors couldn't simply ignore the satellites.
- LeChuck 6y ago
  It was the brightness I was worried about, yes. Should've probably just looked it up myself! I don't think astronavigation is used in any serious capacity anymore, so in that sense it's a moot point. Still, it's a cool practice and it would've been too bad to see that go away.

ianmcgowan 6y ago

Apart from all the comments about this being a bad faith post, I wonder about the utilitarian argument, if you take it at face value. If you could provide decent internet at low cost to large parts of the world that are underserved, at the cost of ruining ground-based telescopes, is that a good trade-off? What if it's just certain kind of telescopes, or certain classes of astronomers (as this seems to be)?

marcus_holmes 6y ago
I think this is useful if we also consider that part of SpaceX's plan is to make launching satellites cheap (in fact, launching anything cheap). So while ground-based astronomy will suffer, space-based astronomy will get cheaper and easier. Presumably to the point where people who want to can subscribe to a Hubble-like satellite service and get all the space photos their hearts desire. Also, we made a similar trade-off a long time ago - most people live in heavily light-polluted cities, because we value having street lighting more than being able to see the stars.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  Cost of launch is not really main reason why we don’t see more space based astronomy. 1. Space is a hostile place, and developing telescope that works there is much harder. 2. There are very real limits on size and weight of what can be put there right now, and rocket equation is ruthless. 3. Any type of maintenance or upgrades are basically impossible, compared to earth based. 4. Adaptive optics were such a huge breakthrough, that basically negated need for most of space based telescopes.
  - gpm 6y ago
    I would call cost of launch to space the main reason, just not the only significant one.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Reasons 2 and 3 are big part of why launches of expensive. There's a feedback loop in space launches: they're expensive, therefore you launch less, so you need to add redundancies and spend more time ensuring the payload will work, which raises the development cost and increases mass, which makes launches less frequent and more expensive. Conversely, reducing the cost of access to space means you can send more stuff that's less robust, which shortens development time and makes it less expensive, and of course makes technological progress faster. Which translates to: suddenly space telescopes may be more affordable, and more of them will be launched.

valuearb 6y ago

This is pretty much a cherry picked worst case scenario. The comet is only visible right above the horizon after sunset for a brief period. Starlink satellites are also only visible low on the horizon, and only for brief periods after sunset and before sunrise, because their low orbits keep them in the Earths shadow the rest of the night.

asdfadsfgfdda 6y ago
Yeah its basically optimized to look bad. The satellites are relatively close to each other. In normal operation, there's no reason to have 30 different satellites in view. I suspect these satellites were very recently launched, so they are not in the normal sun-tracking orientation. Also, the comet is a wide object. A wide image is just more likely to have any satellite in view.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

How much sympathy can I really spare for a purely leisurely hobby like backyard astronomy vs. satellites, Starlink, and our space tech? To me it's like complaining that your photography hobby is harder now that more people can afford to travel and they get in the way of your favorite tourist shots. I'm sure there are good examples of trade-offs that matter here like the impact on terrestrial research telescopes, but a guy snapping a pic of a comet and ranting about it on Twitter frankly has the opposite effect on me.

dmitriid 6y ago
True, because professional astronomers, lucky them, are provided a completely different sky devoid of satellites, debris and other man-made objects.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  If we can make space travel cheap enough to get more Hubble-like telescopes up there, then yes, this. I believe that's part of the goal of SpaceX
  - wbronitsky 6y ago
    Yes, but the point is that we should do that first before polluting the night sky. There are also reasons for humans and animals to not want new, moving stars for reasons other than pure utility. At the very least, these shiny beacons are an insulting advertisement for Musk. Next, people will be defending a Pepsi ad on the moon or something. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/pepsi-advertisement-space/587608/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/pepsi-ad...
  - simion314 6y ago
    I am sure we will not have the space tech soon that can build giant telescopes in space, Hubble is small compared with the larger telescopes on the ground, and from what we can see today it takes decades to send a new telescope in space because you can't go and tweak it. I just hope the benefits are larger then the costs and we the public will not have to pay SpaceX to send telescopes in space to fix the issue SpaceX created.

shadowgovt 6y ago

That looks so cool.

irthomasthomas 6y ago

It's trivial to erase these things from photos. The photographer no doubt knows this, but that isn't the point. It's perfectly reasonable for scientists to want to capture accurate data on the space surrounding the main subject being imaged. Simply erasing the satellites from photos does not recover the data on the space behind. Any data from behind the satellites is lost forever. This photo keeps the satellites in order to visually demonstrate this problem. Remember that astronomy today is often done on a single pixel of data. Starlink blocks multiple pixels, and even ruins entire exposures when they flare up. This will make astronomical research, like searching for exoplanets, far harder and more expensive than it is today. Space telescopes are, and will always be, orders of magnitude more expensive than ground telescopes to launch, maintain and operate.

claydavisss 6y ago
Starlink will provide an immediate benefit to humanity, the astronomy performed otherwise, won't. Looking for exoplanets isn't a practical concern for humanity any time soon.
- ganafagol 6y ago
  Odd perspective when defending technology from the same guy that wants to save humankind by literally colonizing other objects in space.
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    Not necessarily- exoplanets beyond our solar system really aren't going to be feasible to physically travel to until we can come up with something along the lines of faster-than-light travel. Given the lack of light pollution on Mars, I almost wonder if we wouldn't be better off doing all of our astrophysical study out there or in deep space anyway (assuming we have a steady supply of transit back and forth to transfer the data since streaming isn't likely to have good enough quality for a long time either). Then again, I am also not a fan of putting more satellites into orbit either... mostly just struck by your comment as being not terribly odd to me.

peroporque 6y ago

Ah yes, the rich first worlder wants to be able to use their 5k USD camera to take pictures of the sky. What do they care if poor people in rural Africa can develop their farm with better and faster access to the internet, or if children in central Amazons will be able to get reliable internet at school. The level of egocentrism is unbelievable.

dang 6y ago
Please don't fulminate or post denunciatory rhetoric to HN. It only degrades this place even further. Also: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
- peroporque 6y ago
  It is exactly what I said. People who don't see that there are waaay bigger problems in the world than taking hobby fotos of some stars.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ortusdux 6y ago

Each starlink group is inserted at a low orbit, booted up and tested, and then they boost themselves to a higher orbit over a period of a month or so. During this boost, they orient their panels horizontally to minimize drag. Once they reach their final orbit, they rotate their panels vertically, at which point their visibility goes way down (mag 5 (prior to the new coating) down from a mag 0). I've seen plenty of people saying some variation of "there are only 600 of these now, imagine what it will be like when there are 42k of them..." If I understand correctly, the number of bright satellites will be proportional to the launch rate, not the total quantity in orbit. Going off Wikipedia, they have launched about 1/8th of their 2024 goal, and the majority of the remaining satellites are destined for much higher (and dimmer) orbits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Constellation_design_and_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Constellation_design_...

Rebelgecko 6y ago
>If I understand correctly, the number of bright satellites will be proportional to the launch rate, not the total quantity in orbit. Because the constellation needs constant replenishment, the launch rate (and hence the # of brighter satellites) will have to reach a steady state that is directly proportional to the size of the constellation. We can extrapolate that in the future this rate will actually be significantly higher than it is currently: They currently have permission to launch around 12,000 sats. They're launching around 250 per year. The current launch rate is only sustainable if each satellite lasts for 50 years. If you expand that to the proposed 42,000 constellation, 250 new satellites per year is only sustainable with a MTBF of around 150-200 years per satellite, which is nigh impossible in low Earth orbit. Using a lower (but still very generous and optimistic) MTBF of 10 years, Starlink will need to launch 4,200 satellites every year, about ~15x higher their current launch cadence. > the majority of the remaining satellites are destined for much higher (and dimmer) orbit Just about all of the satellites they've orbited so far are hanging out around 550km. SpaceX initially got permission to go as high as 1300km, but they've since changed their mind. The new plan (still pending FCC approval I believe) is to keep all of the satellites between 300-550km. So the future satellites will be as low or lower than the current ones.

sparker72678 6y ago

Anec-data, but in my shots of the comets there were 0 satellites and about 12 airplanes with flashing lights that I had to remove. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I get the frustration, and no doubt I'll be pissed when I have a shot that's more affected, but amateur astrophotography seems like the least-important reason to be concerned about Starlink. But then, the photo is going to get more attention, for sure.

wl 6y ago
Anecdotally, I took about 100 exposures of the comet last weekend with shutter speeds ranging from 10-20 seconds. There were satellite streaks in every exposure! I don't ever remember it being this bad.
autokad 6y ago
It doesnt matter the impact of amateur astrophotography's work, starlink doesn't have the right to take that from them. I do think we need to evaluate whether these costs are worth it. I go further. I myself think we need to take a second look at city light. I'd like us to begin working on making the milky way visible again.
- animal_spirits 6y ago
  I agree. Vast populations of people can't know their place in the universe because they physically can not see it. What can we do to avoid that? In suburbs it seams feasible to stop building / start removing streetlamps in neighborhoods that don't necessarily need them, but I don't know how that would work in bigger cities
  - kergonath 6y ago
    Better, more directional street lamps help, even in large cities. We can tune their wavelength to be less blinding as well. They do not need to illuminate the sky. More of them, and less powerful, would provide better light where it’s actually needed. The other side is to reduce emissions of aerosols and particles that scatter light in the atmosphere.

toohotatopic 6y ago

Wait till we have the first moon bases and there will never be a new moon again.

f00zz 6y ago
Can't wait!

kbenson 6y ago

Flipped on its head, I would say Starlink, or at least the underlying technology that makes it feasible (and it's all related, since it's all SpaceX) may be good for astronomy... eventually. Space based telescopes give a much clearer picture than land based ones. You can't have ubiquitous and/or (relatively) cheap space based telescopes without a thriving launch industry that reduces costs. You can't have that without innovation and competition in the space launch industry. You are unlikely to innovation or competition in that industry the without a market need. Starlink is the market need right now. Want lots of space telescopes to give you even better pictures? Don't kill off what's going to take you there before it begins. The astronomy industry needs to work with SpaceX to minimize the problem while also encouraging them (and anyone else working to drop costs to launch something into orbit) to succeed, not killing off or greatly delaying the oncoming age of ubiquitous and easy access to space telescopes because they are short sighted.

rumanator 6y ago
> Space based telescopes give a much clearer picture than land based ones. Aren't those far more expensive to launch and operate?
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Not necessarily? Starlink represents an order of magnitude improvement in both launch and hardware costs. And that’s with Falcon 9. Starship represents another order of magnitude improvement (or better, over time...).
- kbenson 6y ago
  Right now? Yes. As I understand it you get much more capability for your size of telescope if in space, because you don't have to look through the atmosphere. If launch costs go down (which they are), and satellite components and labor to build operate become cheaper (because of increased general experience, supply of parts and labor, etc), then space satellites become cheaper. If we get better at assembling things in space (which we're only going to do after demand and experience in doing it), it might even be easier to make a larger telescope in space than on land eventually, and the stresses of gravity on the structure for the mirror are greatly reduced or eliminated. It looks like all the recent large telescopes are with segmented mirrors now anyway.[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_reflecting_telescopes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_reflec...

asdfk-12 6y ago

Perhaps to remedy the situation, SpaceX would do well to introduce a large fleet of freely-accessible amateur astronomy platforms with some kind of timeshare credit component? I ordered several images through a university terrestrial telescope as part of an astronomy course and it was a great experience to refine the object's orbital parameters based on the observations.

Alupis 6y ago

I find it astounding that just any old for profit company can decide to ruin a world-wide public resource just to turn a few bucks. In 2020. I'd expect that from something like the East India Company in the 1700's or something. Not a modern company in a modern society.

oh_sigh 6y ago
Do you shake your fist at every airplane that flies overhead too?
- Alupis 6y ago
  The country agreed to that. One day the country may decide against it. No-Fly Zones can be created. A US company airplane passing over my house doesn't impact people in India, for example. Airplanes have proven utility. Airplanes proved their utility before bothering people worldwide.
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    The country agreed to the starlink satellites as well, considering they received FCC approval. The country can still decide against it and now allow any more launches, and the satellites that are up there will come down naturally in a few years time. You may even be able to forcibly deorbit them if they still have propellant left (not sure if they do or not). No-fly zones are almost always created for the government to do government things, and not for the direct benefit of the public (ie reducing airport noise for nearby residents). A US plane passing over your house doesn't impact people in India either negatively or positively(except for the consequences of global warming). These satellites passing over the US and India can equally benefit people in the US and India. It's not like starlink is a US only service and SpaceX is going to prevent anyone in India from having access. Satellites also have proven utility, as does the internet, which is why groups like the UN General Assembly HRC declared access to the internet as a basic human right.
    - Alupis 6y ago

tinus_hn 6y ago

That’s odd, I took a bunch of pictures of that same comet and saw no satellites at all. Did I do something wrong?

dvxvd 6y ago

im 100% against that commercial project is destroying my night sky.. its like building highway through my yard.. our already overglobalized world will be even more 'globalized' in the hands of few.. w t f..

aaron695 6y ago

How did we get to this cargo cult where sitting on our behinds taking photos of the stars and un-ironically posting on the internet supersedes mastering space. It's mostly the media, who care's not for science at all pushing this 'we should be outraged', but we eat it up. Starlink and others helping the world will also create a whole new genre for ground based space photography the super rich can get into, but this drama is so tiring.

mchusma 6y ago

If you want humans to become a space faring people, you need to accept the idea that there will be at least 1000x more things in space. People's comments here are generally insane to me. Let's go to other planets. Let's build a Dyson swarms of O'Neil cylinders with a quadrillion humans living in luxury. Let's keep the light of consciousness alive. Some things will change along the way, like amateur photography.

ineedasername 6y ago

There's a tension here, and I'm not saying that I know where the appropriate balance is-- but it's a tension between the positive societal impact that inexpensive and ubiquitous broadband may have, vs. the societal impact of scientific knowledge from ground-based observatories. I'm sure there's other ways of solving the broadband problem. I'm sure there are other ways of getting the astronomical data. I'm also pretty sure that all of them would have their own trade offs. Everything does. In this case, I think the unilateral approach that Musk is taking has hurt perception of the project as much as the trade offs represented by the project itself.