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How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

• SiempreViernes 6y ago
  Weirdly, HN itself removed the "how" when I just copy pasted in the title and I had to edit it back in...
  • codetrotter 6y ago
    That’s intentional and I think it’s because most articles on the form “how x something something y” don’t actually explain how at all. Even when they do explain how, the title is often just as good without the word how.
  • capableweb 6y ago
    Instead of using the "How" title, it'll be better to use the answer as the title. So instead of "How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images" it would be better with "Starlink satellites might interfere with space observations from Earth" or similar
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• kome 6y ago
  "SpaceX, an aerospace company in Hawthorne, California, has already launched more than 650 of a planned 12,000 Starlink satellites. Other operators include the London-based OneWeb, which has launched 74 of what it hopes will be a gigantic fleet of 48,000 satellites, and Amazon, which last month received US government approval to launch 3,236 satellites for its planned Kuiper service." We need to do something about millionaires. Urgently. But also global governance: space is not US's backyard.
  • cheph 6y ago
    > We need to do something about millionaires. Urgently. Can you elaborate what premise this conclusion follows from? And what do you want to do about them? And going out on a limb, I would assume you have a problem with the satellites, but Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are companies, not a Millionaires. So maybe you meant to say we should do something about companies?
    • rimliu 6y ago
      So you say this idea was born by the company and not some human ambition? How did Amazon the company, or SpaceX the company come up with this? Nothing to do with Bezos and Musk for sure?
      • cheph 6y ago
        > So you say this idea was born by the company and not some human ambition? Not a thing I said. > How did Amazon the company, or SpaceX the company come up with this? Companies have employees, employees are humans with brains, they come up with ideas. > Nothing to do with Bezos and Musk for sure? I'm sure the normal company structures were involved in approving strategy. I doubt the idea originated with either Bezos or Musk, and not sure why their net worth has much to do with it. If you have a problem with ambition, ambition is something many people who are not millionaires have.
    • jsiepkes 6y ago
      > I would assume you have a problem with the satellites, but Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are companies, not a Millionaires. Elon Musk is CEO of SpaceX and owns > 50% of the shares. As for Blue Origin (aka Bezos / Amazon); Bezos is the owner of the company. That means these people can make decisions on their own without consulting anyone else. They appoint the board, they appoint the CEO, etc. And sure, there are outside investors. However these investors can only marginally influence anything because they can not get a majority of share holder votes (since Bezos, Musk have > 50% shares). Maybe they got a seat on the board if their investment is large enough. But then what? They still can't get a majority in the board. Besides the only reason these investors want to participate is because the whole thing is controlled (and partially bankrolled) by Musk and Bezos.
  • maeln 6y ago
    I don't think it has anything to do with millionaires. Satellite internet has demand. It will happen no matter what. What we need is a global regulation for satellite brightness. It was never truly a problem until now, and sadly, these type of legislation tend to happen after the problem already arose instead of anticipating it. The sky will probably be screwed for a while until we have a global standard.
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Millionaires are individuals; spacex and oneweb are companies. Rich people aren't the problem themselves, a lack of regulation and taxation is. In this case, the FTC (iirc) can just approve spacex launching tens of thousands of satellites. This is weird because space is either international - so should be regulated internationally - or sovereign, the bits passing over other countries. But the world is busy with other shit than space legislation right now so eh.
  • iso1210 6y ago
    Last time I checked, London wasn't in the US
  • kanox 6y ago
    No. Providing satellite internet access is a very good thing, and imposing costs on astronomy is acceptable.
• RedShift1 6y ago
  This is bad. This is really really bad. The EU has invested billions in telescopes and that's now going to go to waste. Instead advancing human knowledge it's just going to fill rich guy pockets even more.
  • sumedh 6y ago
    > Instead advancing human knowledge it's just going to fill rich guy pockets even more. Isnt Elon helping to advance human knowledge as well?
    • ashtonbaker 6y ago
      Not really?
      • sumedh 6y ago
        Making space flight cheaper and more reliable certainly helps advance human knowledge in my opinion.
        • sreevisakh 6y ago
          Spaceflight wouldn't be there in the first place if astronomical observations didn't help generations of scientists (including Kepler, Newton and Oberth) evolve the concepts of astrodynamics. Astronomy is far from having given up all its secrets - many of which will surely be applied in everyday life some time in the future. Besides, nobody would be complaining if this was about making spaceflight cheaper. This is about commercial exploitation of space by destroying a scientific resource. As others mentioned, there are easier ways to bring internet to rural areas - if only there was social resolve. This is more about worldwide internet controlled by a few big corporations.
          • TeMPOraL 6y ago
            Powered flight wouldn't be there if not for generations of people playing with kites. That doesn't mean we should abolish airports because they take the prime spots for kiting.
• tom-khagai 6y ago
  I believe it would be difficult to further prevent this from happening since there is so much more demand for global, low-latency wireless internet than for astronomical observations.
  • DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    > there is so much more demand for global, low-latency wireless internet than for astronomical observations. This is very much not true and a remarkably narrow utilitarian view. I understand US folks are poorly served in terms of ISP infrastructure and competition but please don't try to project those issues as a 'global' problem. Internet service is a solved problem, you have transoceanic cables and distribution networks which garantee reliable, high bandwith, _wired_ internet service. Wireless service is a solved problem in densely populated areas, again the issue in the US is the ludicrious pricing of mobile data plans. The only use-cases that this serves are high-income people that want to go off-grid but are unwilling to sacrifice high-bandwith, and military deployments (Which SpaceX does not hide as an objective). To me these are very poor gains for all the negative impact it brings to science and the 'global' public.
    • tom-khagai 6y ago
      The demand is not limited to americans, most third-world countries will benefit from having high speed internet unconstrained by local infrastructure and lack of investment. Having stayed in South East Asia I know the locals would very much appreciate having more than one option: pay-as-you-go mobile data bundles. Even in rural parts of Scandinavia where I spent my vacation, 4G signal was too weak and ISP's refuse to lay fiber unless the whole neighborhood commits to subscribe. This may concern millions of people who need basic or better internet access, meanwhile there are only a few thousand astronomers in the world.
      • DoingIsLearning 6y ago
        The demand that exists is tackled by an increase and expansion of the existing ISP and public infrastructure. A satellite based internet provider is inneficiently duplicating the existing fiber/copper/cellular infrastructure but more importantly cannot scale to serve the billions of people you mention in your comment. Do the maths you cannot keep up this alleged 50Mbps link if you add more than a few million users, there is a finite amount of satellites they can add in contiguous trajectories. The capacity issue means this will never be affordable but to a few select few or state/defense actors. I agree with your problem statement but this unfortunately is just not the solution.
• netram88 6y ago
  What I'm concerned about is how much the launching of tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of satellites will affect our ability to launch things out of orbit. Launch windows are already very precisely calculated, and the more junk we put in orbit the harder that will become.
  • simonh 6y ago
    I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but aside for Covid there are usually 10,000 flights in the air at any given time on average, with several hundred thousand flights in 24hrs. A lot of those are concentrated during the day over the continental US, which is the most congested region in the world. So on that basis, an evenly distributed web of LEO satellites should be manageable, especially as they will also be much more vertically distributed than planes.
  • fock 6y ago
    that's actually a fascinating idea. think about how humanity solves the environment problems and fusion works out, bringing global peace and prosperity for once. Now a smallish rock comes from space. We don't see it, because of "we go to mars, bro"-elon making ground based astronomoy infeasible and debris from crashes from his great internet satellites making 9/10 new launches fail. so, even if we saw it, we couldn't launch a nuke to deflect it. BOOM. There was the USA and Elons android son is just reduced to dust by his daddies hybris.
    • m4rtink 6y ago
      Space based observation of objects on potential collision course with Earth is far superior to earth observatio. For example you can't really observe anything coming from the direction of the sun. Look up NEOCam project that aims to have a near Earth asteroid telescope in solar orbit.
      • fock 6y ago
        how many space-based telescopes are there? And how many will where be, once 9/10 launches fail?
• genidoi 6y ago
  In unrelated news the cost of launching a space telescope (that doesn't suffer from atmospheric perturbations or cloud cover) has decreased by several orders of magnitude.
  • jsiepkes 6y ago
    The satellite itself is way more expensive then a ground based telescope. Maintenance of a space telescope is much more expensive then a ground based telescope. All in all launching a satellite is just a fraction of the total costs of a space telescope. On top of that SpaceX has also not proven to be real friendly towards space telescopes, so that just "moves" the problem. See for example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/02/spacex-refused-to-move-a-starlink-satellite-at-risk-of-collision-with-a-european-satellite/#7d1d19751f62 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/02/s...
    • Spare_account 6y ago
      Your link describes a failure of SpaceX's internal ticketing system which resulted in ESA thinking that SpaceX were ignoring them. It seems unfair to paint SpaceX as anti-space telescope on that basis.
      • jsiepkes 6y ago
        > Your link describes a failure of SpaceX's internal ticketing system which resulted in ESA thinking that SpaceX were ignoring them. I'm not saying they are anti-space telescope. I'm saying I'm seeing little evidence they want to play nice with other people who have a stake in space. I have seen mostly evidence to the contrary. Regarding that particular incident; ESA's (way larger) satellite had that orbit / trajectory for quite a while before SpaceX decided to enter it's path. SpaceX should never have created that situation to begin with. And when the situation was created (for whatever reason) SpaceX should have manoeuvred their satellite out of the way without requiring ESA intervention to begin with. And then when ESA had to ask they should have responded. That can't all be blamed on a faulty ticket system...
• scoot 6y ago
  Seems like the perfect use case for Vantablack. Of course the satellites will still block ER as they pass across the sky, but at least if they aren't reflecting so much light it would surely be of some help?
  • lifthrasiir 6y ago
    Painting was already tried and doesn't work. > But the black paint made the satellite thermally ‘hot’, harming its internet operations, said Patricia Cooper, SpaceX’s vice-president of satellite government affairs, at a recent webinar.
    • dharma1 6y ago
      maybe something like this? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2241717-infrared-reflecting-paint-can-cool-buildings-even-when-it-is-black/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2241717-infrared-reflec... Would still be bad for astronomy but at least the impact for naked eye would be less.
  • valuearb 6y ago
    SpaceX is adding visors, which solve the problem without heating the satellites.
    • throwaway2048 6y ago
      It is completely impossible to block light and not absorb and re-radiate heat.
      • valuearb 6y ago
        Pedantic much? In conversational English what I said is != blocks ALL light without absorbing ANY heat. Visors block enough light to greatly reduce reflected light, and do it without substantially increasing satellite temperature. There is a thing called an insulator, which I hear can efficiently reduce the transfer of heat from things like visor to satellite.
• verytrivial 6y ago
  The article covers the mitigations already in place and how they only partially resolve the issue. These satellites are low, bright (at dawn/dusk) and very soon to be incredibly numerous. Yes, it is possible for data workflows to post-process these streaks away, but not all configurations allow this, and whereas previous intrusions were somewhat rare and could be ignored that simply won't be the case due to three companies from one country. This is cost turned into an "externality" and foisted upon astronomers--at every scale of investment--all over the world. Stock holders in these companies won't pay for it, but tax payers everywhere will pay for the mitigations. Not cool. This is a hill I'll die on.
  • q3k 6y ago
    You won't be alone on that hill. This issue is yet another reminder that capitalism only appears to work because you assume infinite resources on a finite planet.
    • kanox 6y ago
      This one of the stupider hills to die on. There are plenty of other factors interfering with astronomy and they can largely processed away. >This issue is yet another reminder that capitalism only appears to work because you assume infinite resources on a finite planet. This is complete bullshit, and a reminder that anti-capitalists are not worth arguing with.
    • valuearb 6y ago
      Capitalism is terrible, it’s just far better than anything else we’ve ever tried. It’s only real Achilles heel is tragedy of the commons (like this), which is a problem for the isms as well.
  • dr_dshiv 6y ago
    Isn't the solution more satellites for astronomy? In fact, couldn't the constellation of commercial satellites be used to make a massive distributed hubble telescope?
    • 6y ago
• mkj 6y ago
  How long are digital exposures? It seems like most of the interference could be removed with a bit of signal processing.
  • terramex 6y ago
    If you take long exposure of dim object, bright satellite passing in front of it will saturate signal and there will be nothing to recover. To avoid that you need to track all the satellites and split one long exposure into multiple shorter ones - but that multiplies read noise accordingly.
    • system2 6y ago
      This is why I take 500+ images and process them. I don't think the moving satellites would cause any harm to long exposure deep space photography. I agree if you take 30 pictures, it could be a problem.
      • terramex 6y ago
        > This is why I take 500+ images and process them. If you do 500 exposures you get 500x read noise of the sensor mixed with signal. Modern CCD and CMOS sensor have low read noise (compared to thermal and shot noise) but not zero. For scientific observations of faint objects long exposure times on order of hours are necessary, for amateur astrophotography you can just go with multiple exposures.
        • mkj 6y ago
          Thanks for the explanation, I didn't realise there was a per-exposure noise component.
  • antognini 6y ago
    A deep image will typically consist of many 20-minute exposures. You can't have the exposure be too short because the CCD read-out process introduces noise, so you want as few read-outs as possible. But if the image is exposed for too long parts of it may saturate and start to ruin the rest of the image. (Plus you may have the whole thing ruined by a cosmic ray or a satellite or something.) Something around twenty minutes is generally the sweet spot. Throwing out an image or two that had a satellite or cosmic ray pass through out of a few dozen isn't so bad. But if every single one of the images has a satellite trail you may be out of luck.
• scoot 6y ago
  I can periodically see with the naked eye what appear to be "moving stars" (about the same approximate brightness as an average star), and appearing to orbit the earth (moving in a "straight" line across the sky). Can I assume that these are satellites?
  • gppk 6y ago
    They look something like this - https://explainingscience.org/2020/01/29/spacex-starlink-satellites/ https://explainingscience.org/2020/01/29/spacex-starlink-sat... If you google starlink satellites you can see more images
    • scoot 6y ago
      Not a chain, just an occasional individual one.
  • sneak 6y ago
    Yes, especially if they are just after dusk or before dawn. Spotting satellites is a common thing.
    • scoot 6y ago
      Yes, an hour or so after dusk. Guess that's what they are then!
      • DavidKarlas 6y ago
        You can even see shape(solar panels) of ISS with naked eye, pretty mind blowing...
        • nsilvestri 6y ago
          No you can't. That's beyond the biological capabilities of the human eye, even if you have absolutely perfect vision.
  • 6y ago
• thdrdt 6y ago
  Could a country (or a continent) in theory remove satellites hanging above their area? What if countries decide to extend the airspace to the aerospace?
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    How does this work at sea? I don't know much about how aggressive (or not) "freedom of navigation" operations really are. They don't appear to be too friendly in the Strait of Hormuz or the South China Sea. However it is supposed to work and however it does work at sea, is the situation similar for space? > What if countries decide to extend the airspace to the aerospace? I imagine the US would consider it an attack and retaliate (maybe economically, militarily, or covertly) against the "attacking" country.
  • zo1 6y ago
    There are international treaties that govern some of this stuff. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty (Which I think is for further out than orbit) You can find out more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law
  • sreevisakh 6y ago
    There is a very important distinction between airspace and plain space. Violation of a country's airspace is a wilful act (unless of course you're lost). But you will inevitably have to fly over another country if you want to be in orbit. Even geosynchronous slots are limited to the equator (GSO insertion also requires phasing). This doesn't prevent countries from claiming 'aerospace' and destroying invading crafts. However, other countries could do the same and space exploration will be a non-starter for humanity as a whole. This is probably the reason why countries agreed to space treaties allowing overflight - and it will probably remain the same. Of course, this logic doesn't apply to suborbital flights. Any country with the means will probably just shoot down unauthorized objects on suborbital trajectory into their airspace.
  • kanox 6y ago
    There is absolutely no way to do this. These are low-orbit satellites and they will eventually "fly over" every point on the Earth up to their maximum inclination. Only geo-stationary satellites are "hanging above an area" and suffer from high latency because of the speed of light. Legally speaking "airspace" does not extend beyond the atmosphere. There are treaties for this, otherwise almost all satellites would need approvals from almost all governments.
• thdrdt 6y ago
  Related: SpaceX tests black satellite to reduce ‘megaconstellation’ threat to astronomy https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00041-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00041-4
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  I feel like this could be solved with a simple requirement that anyone launching anything shiny into LEO has to help fund space based telescopes. They're better anyway and we can have the best of all worlds that way...
  • chosenbreed37 6y ago
    Good idea!
  • dr_dshiv 6y ago
    Classic capitalism management. If a market change creates negative effects on society, create a tax to mitigate negative effects
    • LatteLazy 6y ago
      Pretty much. Getting the best outcome for the most people etc etc...
    • zo1 6y ago
      Classic government "intervention" that stifles innovation under the guise of doing good. You didn't "solve" the problem. You basically made it harder for innovation from newer players to occur whilst still letting the "evil capitalist corporation" do what they want because you've imposed a cost that they just incorporate into their margins. It's not the best of both, it's the worst of both.
  • acqq 6y ago
    > has to help fund space based telescopes. The telescopes from space can't do what the Earth based can, so the premise is false.
    • LatteLazy 6y ago
      Is that true? What are they missing? I thought Hubble, JWST etc could do basically everything a ground based one could do only better? Excluding radio telescopes which are huge but not effected by satellites anyway.
• sneak 6y ago
  If only there were some existing available technology designed to make satellites hard to see or otherwise detect. Oh well. Too bad nobody’s ever researched that. https://youtu.be/ZV6A74qLiec https://youtu.be/ZV6A74qLiec
  • system2 6y ago
    Best thing to do midnight is watching youtube conspiracy videos.
    • sneak 6y ago
      I don’t think it’s a conspiracy to imply that several nations likely have a significant body of research on stealth satellite technology that could likely solve the problem at hand.
• sleavey 6y ago
  I recently moved out of the city after many years and looked up at night for the first time in a while and was surprised to see so much stuff moving around. The first time I saw something I thought I was really lucky to catch the ISS but after seeing the "ISS" many more times in the following minutes I quickly realised it was SpaceX and friends' satellites. I also recall last year looking up and seeing a string of about 20 bright lights moving quickly across the sky and wondering if it was the start of WW3. Turns out it was a SpaceX launch.
• svara 6y ago
  Living in a city, I didn't understand how big a deal this was until I got a view of the clear night sky in a less populated area recently. The satellites are already visible by eye everywhere, and there are only 655 Starlink satellites. There's approval for 12000, and SpaceX is seeking approval for 30000! If they're all going to be this reflective, satellites will be the main thing we see in the night sky a few years from now. Forget about astronomy; 10 years from now you'd be telling your kids "when I was your age we used to be able to see constellations of stars in the sky". By eye, only about ~5000 stars are visible in the night sky.
  • modeless 6y ago
    It's not as big a deal as you think. The satellites are only visible to the naked eye for a few weeks after launch as they travel to their final orbits; after that they are too dim to see. The sky will not appear different than it does now to the naked eye; you will never see thousands of satellites. Most of the bright satellites you see now have been there for many years already; Starlink will not be visible like those.
    • Thlom 6y ago
      Maybe, but with tens of thousands of satellites, each with a life expectancy of about 3-5 years then Space X will have to re-fill the constellation constantly.
      • modeless 6y ago
        Sure, you'll be able to see the most recent launch, just as you can now. But you won't see 30,000 in the sky, which is what everyone assumes. Also note that you can't see them at all in the middle of the night; only for an hour or so around sunset and sunrise.
        • totetsu 6y ago
          Isn't sunrise and sunset the prime time for people looking at the sky for aesthetic reasons?
• modeless 6y ago
  There is so much unwarranted alarmism about this. This is not the end of astronomy, nor is it even super serious. The "unavoidable impact" they're talking about is that astronomers will have to care about when and where satellites will appear, rather than not bothering and just throwing away the rare image with a satellite in it. A small percentage of their pixels will be affected by satellite trails and they will need to implement better algorithms to avoid them, remove them, or use different sensor technologies that can reject them better. Sure, if you're an astronomer this is annoying, and will cost you some effort and money and time. But you'll still be able to do astronomy. Meanwhile, if you're not an astronomer, the satellites will not be visible to the naked eye in their final orbits. The entire surface of the Earth will gain low latency broadband internet access for the first time, and new launch systems will drastically reduce the cost of access to space, enabling more space-based astronomy.
  • guerrilla 6y ago
    > will cost you some effort and money and time. This externality needs to be captured for it to be fair.
    • modeless 6y ago
      Sure. Governments regulate space pretty closely and they have the ability to account for that. I'm sure the commercial potential of global broadband internet is high enough that some funding for astronomers wouldn't be a huge obstacle to the constellation operators.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • gpm 6y ago
      This is a curious assumption. Why would the small number of astronomers get ownership over the resource of the night sky instead of the much larger population of people who want internet? I'd argue that the positive externalities of the latter far outweigh the negative externalities of the former when deciding how to tax spacex.
• guerrilla 6y ago
  > A negative externality is any difference between the private cost of an action or decision to an economic agent and the social cost. Like pollution, I think this is another perfect example of a negative externality. A few companies stand to benefit quite a lot by incurring costs and risks onto others. Maybe these its possible for astronomy and other endeavours to work around this but it doesn't seem fair that they should have to be the ones to pay for it. If it isn't possible to work around then I think we have a bigger problem here. Personally, I'd like to see these orbits like realestate which are commomly owned and democratically managed by all of humanity. Then companies could, if people are willing, temporarily rent them with proceeds equally distributed. Like in pollution, I don't think market demand for wireless Internet really suffices as a vote here and we need to make it more explicit to really gather consent. Wouldn't it be neat if the net result is that capturing the negative externality actually funded the launching of better space based telescopes?
• refresher 6y ago
  Considering the end result, 'Dyson Sphere' would have been a more interesting name choice than Starlink.
  • q3k 6y ago
    Presenting SpaceX “Dyson Sphere but wait fuck that's the wrong celestial body isn't it oh well let's just roll with it”
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• dharma1 6y ago
  ok, so 30k satellites from SpaceX, 60k from OneWeb. I anticipate this is just the beginning, other US companies and other countries will want to launch similar amounts. What will the impact be when there are 500k+ satellites in LEO, who decides who can launch more?
  • rimliu 6y ago
    I hope not many other countries would want to do so, because many have solved internet problem already.
    • sreevisakh 6y ago
      You shouldn't judge other countries by western standards. There are a lot of places with poor or non-existent internet. But I fear that the reason other countries will do the same is because of their current infrastructure. Capable countries would be weary of ceding the control of their internet to American companies. We already have a splintered internet with countries and companies addicted to monitoring and controlling information (which would have been impossible in the first place if it was designed following the original principles of creating a mesh, rather than a hierarchy). Why would anyone give up now?
  • sreevisakh 6y ago
    Considering the commercial pressure, regulatory agencies are likely to just reduce the collision avoidance margins. (I remember reading that this is already happening, just don't have a reference). It's easier to keep government agencies in line compared to conglomerates. But it would be fun when the Kessler syndrome starts. You could imagine that the probability increases when there are more satellites in one layer - especially LEO. I wonder how much all the recent launches affected that probability.
• nikanj 6y ago
  We paid operators huge sums of money to build fiber internet across the US, but they kept the money instead. Now we're trying with satellites. The whole astronomy problem could be solved if FCC had teeth and forced us to get the fiber connections we already paid for
  • gpm 6y ago
    Fiber never solves the problem of internet on a ship, or plane, or tank. It never economically solves the problem of internet in the middle of nowhere. If the FCC had teeth the US would have internet going up to the "edge" of nowhere (for some definitions of the boundary), but there are always limits. Satellites nicely complement that by working best in non-dense areas.
  • lutorm 6y ago
    To my knowledge no one's paying SpaceX to do Starlink at this point in time.
• pvaldes 6y ago
  Perhaps putting a camera at the outer side of each satelite and a screen at the facing-to-earth side transmitting what the camera sees could help. Plus google advertising benefits, of course.
  • gus_massa 6y ago
    The amount of light blocked by the satellite is too small. The problem is that the satellite reflects a lot of light from the sun.
    • pvaldes 6y ago
      Maybe they could use a broken/plicated/spiky surface that does not reflect so much light. That definitely would reduce the amount of light reflected. Maybe could be designed to act as a heat exchanger also or be used as a system to mitigate the improbable impact of a small debris
• gus_massa 6y ago
  There was a big discussion a month ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926699 In a comment by vilhelm_s in the previous thread has a link to a site that explain that the usual software can select correct the parts of the images and create a nice image 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...
• deleted 6y ago
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• Waterluvian 6y ago
  I'm not expressing a pro or con opinion here, but I'm curious. Did this same conversation happen when we started light polluting the city? Was this why observatories adapted by moving to darker locations? On the surface this seems a wee bit absurd, but I wonder if a case could be made that it's time for more space-based telescopes.
  • sreevisakh 6y ago
    That is exactly what happened. It's clear even to the naked eye - people still freak out when power grids get knocked out at night. They see far more stars and think that's what caused the failure. To be more technical, the EM radiation signals that astronomers are interested in is very faint and barely above the background noise level. This is why they have to use large aperture and long exposure to essentially amplify the difference between signal and noise. They can resolve fainter signals (images) if the noise floor (light pollution) is less. Compared to space telescopes, ground telescopes were limited by atmospheric interference. This has improved much lately with adaptive optics. Space telescopes are better, but it's too costly. You will never see a mega telescope constellation, because there is no money to be made. Ground telescopes still generate considerable valuable data (in scientific terms. corporates wouldn't care any less). Even individuals have ground telescopes that do this. Some projects like Sloan Digital Sky Survey (https://www.sdss.org/ https://www.sdss.org/) puts massive amounts of data in the public domain. SDSS also does observations that are impossible with space telescopes. Space telescopes are good, but are complementary to ground telescopes - not a replacement. When (some) people say that we should simply forget ground telescopes in favor of space telescopes, they are actually asking to throw away cheap, accessible, democratic, inclusive and sometimes unique way of astronomical observations in favour of an incredibly costly, elitist and closed methods which is viable only to big corps who have little interest in it because of lack of short term profits. An aside, there are some people in this thread asking astronomers to stop complaining and just remove the streaks from the image. I would say that's incredibly philistine stance - science has long term benefits that is underrated compared to commercially motivated projects with perceived short-term social benefits. An approach suggested is to statistically remove the streaks from image. That's against the whole purpose of these observations - astronomers are interested in the details that cannot yet be statistically predicted. Another approach is to use multiple exposures and combine them. Again - the signals they are interested in often takes night long exposure before signal is sufficiently amplified above and noise. This can't be solved with multiple exposure. The third approach is to close the sensor (usually CCD) with a shutter when a satellite is in the vicinity. This is more viable. However, this is going to be hard and is going to waste a lot of exposure time.
• wing-_-nuts 6y ago
  Hopefully they can come up with some sort of 'vanta black' coating for the sats that reduces this issue. I agree with there needing to be a tax on bright, private sats in orbit. Space is getting more democratized, but not nearly so much so that an international body wouldn't be able to slap fines on companies putting 'disco balls' in orbit. Another thing is that our skies will probably get brighter overall when we resort to stratospheric sulfide injection to try to reduce the effects of global warming. Anyone that doubts this will happen needs to come to grips with the fact that this is our cheapest most readily available means of reducing temps until we can get our emissions under control. We're going to need to fund a lot more space based telescopes to preserve our ability to do science.
  • valuearb 6y ago
    Vanta Black would make the satellites too hot. SpaceX is using visors to solve the problem .
• valuearb 6y ago
  > “There’s no place to hide in the middle of the night from such a satellite constellation,” says Tony Tyson, a physicist at the University of California, Davis. Fortunately this has never been true for Starlink, which are at such low orbits they are always in the earths shadow at night, excepting dusk and dawn.
• ColanR 6y ago
  Has anyone talked about the possibility of putting our astronomy tools in orbit? Seems like as it becomes feasible to put megaconstellations in orbit, it also becomes feasible to put more telescopes in orbit. Wouldn't that solve the problem?
• ordu 6y ago
  So the next logical step is to move astronomy into space. I mean all the astronomy, including an amateur astronomy. Elon Musk should launch 100k telescopes into orbit (somewhat higher than constellations of satellites), so I could pay $100/year to rent one, to write a program controlling telescope taking pictures and sending them to me.
• crazygringo 6y ago
  Serious question: how is this any different from airplanes and birds "photobombing" astronomy images? Ground-based telescopes deal with objects in the sky all the time. What makes a higher number of satellites any more problematic than those? The sky is a noisy place. And we've had satellites up for decades. How are "megaconstellations" any different?
• jtlienwis 6y ago
  Maybe it is time to think about moving astronomy to space or possibly the moon. Issues for years about street light polution. Even ducks show up sometimes on astronomy photos.
• arthropodSeven 6y ago
  it's hard to make the claim that the private development of space doesn't inspire people in the same way as the old national projects did. my heart swells watching a livestream of a satellite being delivered into orbit. but "memelord space magnate delivers global internet access" doesn't give the endeavor the gravity it deserves. space is the last realm of mystery. to me, a glance toward the sky and the stars has always been the fastest way to feel the presence of God. it won't lose that for me, even if the daytime sky fills up with blinkenlights. but it might not provide that for anyone else, anymore, if it stays—forgive me—on this trajectory. > The planets are all long gone. The inkblot finally closes overhead and the last star winks out. The gibbous Moon remains shining balefully down on the world for a tense and hopeful minute, but then, in an eyeblink, is swallowed up by one final event horizon, and spirited away. > Left in utter darkness, the former astronomer tries and fails to deal rationally with his loss, and his isolation from the human race who, as the voice rightly tried to tell him, has really lost nothing. https://qntm.org/astronomer https://qntm.org/astronomer
• batt4good 6y ago
  I'm pretty pissed billionaires and their stupid toy internet projects have ruined my chances of taking a clear picture of the asteroid in my name (won at an Intel ISEF science & engineering olympiad in high school) for the foreseeable future :( . It only transits the earth into a position where the sun lights it up every three years - I'm still working on finding a university to aim a spectrometer / laser at it so I can identify it's mineral composition and decide how much to charge asteroid miners for it ;)
• jessaustin 6y ago
  Lots of people don't think Starlink is important enough to be barely visible over the whole earth. Lots of people think it is. I don't care one way or the other, but I'm glad that the precedent is being set. Someday humanity will have a reason to put something big into orbit, and at that time those who favor progress won't want to have to fight the NotInMySky fanatics. As we can see ITT, they're worse than the New England wind farm opponents.
• swframe2 6y ago
  Since their internet service will generate a lot of money, maybe spacex should just provide very low cost launches of future telescopes. Or maybe spacex should launch their own telescopes in partnership with researchers and sell the service for a low fee. I also hope we tax companies that launch and own satellites to fund a clean up service that de-orbits all the junk before they cause the Kessler syndrome.
  • gpm 6y ago
    Part of getting a FCC license for space radios is having a plan to avoid Kessler syndrome. For things like Starlink that plan is "stick them in low orbits so they naturally deorbit within a few years in the absolute worst case".
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Since their internet service will generate a lot of money, maybe spacex should just provide very low cost launches of future telescopes. That's exactly what they're doing. Starlink exists to fund Starship R&D, which will translate to much cheaper launch costs for everyone, not just astronomers.
• m3kw9 6y ago
  Maybe they can now launch more space telescopes.
• m3kw9 6y ago
  I feel this is like internet disrupting a lot of things, maybe space photography needs to also evolve with the new landscape
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sfblah 6y ago
  I appreciate the arguments on both sides of this, but it's hard for me to get past the point that the satellites are temporary infrastructure, whereas Earth-based fixed wireless or fiber/wire lines are fairly permanent. It's hard for me to understand why the solution here is the temporary one. A decade ago I think my opinion would have been different, because technology didn't make offering gigabit bandwidth via wire/fiber and fixed wireless pretty straightforward. So, back then you could have argued everything was temporary. Nowadays, I suspect gigabit fiber/fixed wireless will last a very, very long time before being outmoded (if it ever is). So, I'm asking myself whether it isn't just more sensible to put up the fixed investment to connect remote areas using existing technologies rather than blasting off satellites again and again to do it.
  • lutorm 6y ago
    If you think you can competitively install fiber to all the areas that will be served by Starlink, then it seems you should be able to outcompete them. No one's preventing you from giving it a try.
    • sfblah 6y ago
      Well I mentioned Fixed Wireless as well. Also, there's room for government in this. That's like suggesting highways, high-speed rail and airports should all be privately funded. In most cases, societies have chosen to make those projects the purview of the government.
      • lutorm 6y ago
        I agree, but that doesn't affect the question of competitiveness between satellite and ground options. A few thousand satellites sounds like a lot, but the amount of ground installations that would have to be done to give the same area of access is staggering.
• lutorm 6y ago
  This was posted in a deep link but I'm reposting it: SpaceX mitigations in progress: https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-update-04-28-2020/ https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-update-04-28-2020/ The OIR report, if you bother to actually read it, also details that a) astronomers agree that providing world-wide broadband is a worthy cause, and b) that there is close cooperation between astronomers and at least SpaceX to work out mitigations.
• ranbumo 6y ago
  How many sats in Leo would you need for it to potentially impact launch windows and access to space? Does anyone have any data or speculation on this?
• grawprog 6y ago
  Just star watching in general's become somewhat disappointing. I remember satellites were nearly as rare as meteors to see and almost as exciting when you spotted one. Now though, it's hard to even look at the stars without something moving in sky. Every couple minutes there's satellites.